


Oceans rise

by Petra



Series: No Proper Jedi [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Wolves, Everyone Is Poly Because The Force, F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Psychic Wolves, Telepathic Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-10-27 14:01:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 41,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17768144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petra/pseuds/Petra
Summary: The Rebel Alliance's wolfpack makes war against the Empire and love in any spare minute.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to: Sage, Jamjar, TheLiterator, Saiditallbefore, Hannah, and TheDeadParrot for lending a hand with this.
> 
> This story does not take the events of Solo: A Star Wars Story into account regarding backstory.

The Alliance's base on Ord Pardron has rows and rows of snubfighters, all swarming with techs getting them battle-ready. None of the frantic activity manages to distract Leia from the artwork on the noses of the squadron of X-wings. "When did they have time to get that done?" she asks Han, who's grinning.

"You've been away for months, your Highness. It doesn't take that long to slap on some paint."

Luke stops dead and stares up at one. "How--why?"

It's a pretty good likeness, as far as Leia can tell from floor level: Luke with one hand on his lightsaber and one on his crotch, leaning against the curvature of the cone like it's built to support him, grinning defiance and shirtless invitation at the world while a wolf who's supposed to be Krayt prowls at his feet.

When Leia looks past it, the next fighter over has the same splay, except the only thing preserving that painted Luke's modesty is the Alliance starbird.

"They definitely got your chin right," Leia says. "And your ass."

"Leia!" He's blushing, which none of the artists bothered with. "How many people did this?"

"That's what you get for blowing up a Death Star and being cute, kid." Han ruffles his hair.

Luke ducks instead of trying to stop him with any practical measures. "Yeah, but still."

Leia frowns. "You mean they didn't ask you?" She turns back towards the _Falcon_ 's berth. "C-3PO, could you find out the name of the artist of the first of these, please? I need to know who to assign to paint them all over."

"Just a moment, ma'am," C-3PO says, and takes off into the base.

"Wait, wait, hang on," Luke says, rubbing his temples. "There's something--I thought she was kidding, that's all. And I was pretty drunk."

"Then she did ask?" Leia won't tear anyone a new one for Luke forgetting, that's for sure.

Luke's blush goes a little deeper. "She wanted--she wanted the three of us. The Bane of the Death Star. Actually. But I said I could only speak for myself."

That brings heat to Leia's cheeks. "Good answer." The next X-wing they pass has a familiarly black-and-white clad form, though, so someone must have asked Han for permission. His vest is open, his shirt is too, and his blaster dangles insouciantly at his cocked hip, like he doesn't have to be aiming it at any particular second to be deadly.

Luke whistles appreciatively. "Maybe I should get an X-wing again after all."

"For the artwork?" Han asks. He's not quite blushing.

"Sure. Between that one, and--" Luke nods to their right.

Leia knows it's Amilyn's bird because no one else has ever asked her permission, or would dare without it. No one else would find an artist who could make Senate robes look like lingerie and armor at the same time, and a pose that blends the best oratory with wielding a lightsaber. The blade is as white as the Senate robes. Easily amended to the proper turquoise.

Of all the wolves, the portrait of Arala on Amilyn's X-wing is closest to right. The artist had good holos, and they must have used research from the Guardians on how wolves matured, not just guessed and generalized from other canines.

She misses Amilyn fiercely for a moment, loudly enough that it gets her a hand on each of her shoulders and two wolves pressed against her sides. It will be a relief to be with someone she can be silent with, someone with whom she can share as much as she wants and no more. At some point, Amilyn may need to be in the packsense for logistics purposes, but Leia won't suggest it to her until it's a necessity.

She has excesses of intimacy with her family breathing in her ears on every side right now, and she knows they are admiring her both in painted form on the side of Amilyn's craft and in her far more accessible self.

"They made you look like a warrior goddess," Luke says. 

"That's our Princess," Han agrees. "She hunts down evildoers. Drags off the unworthy and feeds their souls to the pit." He glances up at the painting. "Smites anybody who dares to mistreat somebody in front of her."

Luke's crooked smile isn't a patch on Han's, but he gives it a try anyway. "The kind of goddess who dissolves slaves' tracer beacons with a touch."

The phrase makes a chill go down Leia's back. "Tracer beacons?"

They both look at her with that "poor, innocent little rich girl" face she hates so much. Krayt and Arala lean against her, picking up the answer Luke won't send her, but will share with them.

Luke says after a long moment. "My grandmother--our grandmother, sorry--never had hers removed. It was too close to the spine, they said. Actually, I don't know whether anyone ever took out my father's, either."

"Your--" Han goes green, then silent. _No shame in where you start,_ he sends. _Or where your grandmother was. But the Jedi must have had the know-how to take out slaver tech._

 _Not necessarily._ Leia adds that to the long list of things she'll have to ask Vader and doesn't want to.

 _Most of the implants have a detonator in them,_ Luke says, as if the concept needs to get any worse.

Leia wishes she were the goddess on Amilyn's ship so she could save everyone from that kind of scourge. Even Vader. _Appalling._

 _Yes,_ Luke agrees.

Han shakes it off. "Come on, one more row of X-wings with your smiling faces painted on them and we'll be at the office."

"Our smiling faces?" Leia asks.

"Mostly his," Han allows.

There is one more painting of Leia in the hangar, this one so precise and accurate she knows it was done from a state holo of her. In it, she is perfectly solemn, her clothing entirely proper, her lightsaber at the ready and Arala recognizable. It is not mounted on a ship, but leans against a wall, waiting to be placed on the ship it belongs to. Luke, on a matching piece of paneling leaning beside her, is similarly garbed, holding a defensive stance with Krayt. They look like Jedi Knights, not pin-ups with sabers. "Where did you get the extra cladding for the _Falcon_ 's forward mounts?" Leia asks.

"Around," Han says. His cheeks are pink. "But I never asked you, either of you, for permission, and it wouldn't have seemed right springing them on you."

"You could've written," Luke says. "They're flattering portraits. I'm not sure Master Yoda would think they were accurate, but they're what we want our opponents to think."

"Terrible opsec, I said it from the first." Han snorts. "The Jedi are gone except our two, and nobody's got wolves except us, so let's draw them all over our fighters."

Leia pushes her fingers into Arala's ruff. The Alliance had made Vader's job ludicrously easy and he hadn't even known he was looking for them specifically. "Or a shout of defiance." She thinks it through. "The Hutts want our Commander dead. Here he is looking like a dirty weekend. Come and take him if you can. The Empire destroyed a temple of the Whills on Jedha, and we're not afraid to show you our queenwolves. They destroyed General Kenobi on the Death Star, and we've trained two new Jedi you haven't seen in battle yet."

"Neither have we," a woman calls, her voice distorted by echoes among the fighters.

The wolves scent the air while the humans test the feeling of the Force. There are no obvious threats present when Amilyn steps between two fighters in an orange flightsuit that makes her vibrant purple hair into a shout. "When do we get a demonstration?" she asks.

Leia hugs her tightly, ignoring the press of the toggles and straps on her flightsuit, the way she always does. There is only one way to hug a snubfighter pilot, and she chose the one where she means it a long time ago. Instead of asking her question again or waiting for a better answer than a hug, Amilyn kisses her.

They'd barely had a chance on Hoth, a how are you, a how about it, and a how do we save the planet from imminent attack. Ord Pardron has been established longer and has better defenses. Leia kisses her back and gets a flash of how they'd look together up against Amilyn's painted X-wing, thrusting and flushed, while above her Leia-in-the-Senate looks perfect and unruffled.

She has no idea whose thought that was. Amilyn nibbles her lower lip and Arala leans against her when her knees give. They can't fuck in the hangar without getting caught, except they have lookouts--if they're willing to be lookouts. Leia gets a fond smile from Luke, a _yeah, I guess_ that's not as sullen as it's meant to be from Han, and the wolves going to cover the sectors they've picked.

"Your squad's efficient," Amilyn says appreciatively.

"Your bird's one row back and three down, right? That is where you wanted this, I'm sure."

She smirks. Leia's not sure how long she's been weak for people with smirks like that, but she refuses to worry about it now. "I had her painted in your honor." Amilyn offers her hand and Leia takes it, then tries to use the Force to hold herself up when her knees quiver. Sometimes the power of life is a little less useful than she wants it to be.  

The second long impression of Leia in the Senate with a Lightsaber and Wolf is about as striking as the first. "For me, huh?" Leia says, resting her hand on Amilyn's hip.

"Entirely." Amilyn kisses her ear. "All those pretty boys flying around threatening people, I couldn't have the Imperials believing we'd forgotten one of our heroes."

"I'm glad you didn't start a trend." Leia nuzzles the sweet, familiar skin of her neck and Amilyn sighs, turning them so Leia's leaning against the X-wing.

Predictable, maybe, but she won't argue, not with Amilyn's thigh solid and strong between hers. "I told them I was the only one with permission," between kisses, which is as right and true as the grinding dance, hands on each other's hips, Leia's fingers in Amilyn's hair. They tease each other's mouths with the same familiarity, the tentative learning-to-kiss flicks, the edge-of-too-much thrusts, and the sweet perfection of long practice.

Amilyn's fingers dig into her hips and she whispers, "Oh, Leia."

Leia holds fast so she can take what she needs, balances her, and watches her lovely face crease, then relax in the tide of pleasure and its respite. Amilyn kisses her again as soon as her focus returns and draws her closer. "Ready?"

"Please." It's the work of a moment between old lovers, the swivel of hips just so, and Leia clings to her as fervently as she's clung to Luke and Han recently, without actively sharing her thoughts and feelings on the matter.

She hadn't set up shielding against them, she realizes when her head clears, but they aren't calling encouragement from the corners of her mind. Perhaps Luke has dragged Han into a quiet corner and forced second-hand discretion on him.  
                               
_I'm keeping watch, not watching you two,_ Han sends, a little heated. _You finish up so we can get back to work._  

_Yes, sir, Commander Solo._

"Your eyes go distant when you're talking to Luke," Amilyn says, her fingers on Leia's cheek. "It might be a liability in battle."

"We don't usually have much to say in battle besides 'Duck.'" She's not going to admit outside of High Command that she can speak with Han, and not to anyone outside of the highest clearances that she can speak with Vader.

Except that Amilyn has always had her highest clearances, emotionally. "But there are new battles coming. A different kind. I'll need you and Mon Mothma."

Amilyn raises her eyebrows. Her cheeks are still flushed, her eyes bright, but now her expression focuses in a different way. "Do tell."

"It might take you away from the cockpit. More--" Leia makes an oratorical gesture.

"I miss those battles too," Amilyn admits. "Less obvious damage, but when you landed a good hit, there was nothing like it."

Leia smiles at her. Then the faint coldness in the back of her mind comes to a point, and she does not censor her words. "I wish I could contact my father."

"I know." Amilyn takes her hand, not with the smoothness of Lando or Han trying to court her, but with the warmth of a dear friend, trying to embrace her without enveloping her entirely again. "I know."

"I need a council of politicians as soon as we can arrange one."

Amilyn kisses her fingers. "Tonight, one hundred local, if all goes to plan. Mon, me, you, at the very least."

Leia nods. "It will be a start." And a start best kept out of the packsense and the Force. "Thank you."

"It's my honor to serve." Amilyn nods back and goes with her normal stride, only the faintest sway indicating what they might have been doing.

Leia's squad comes back from their posts a moment later, the wolves grinning at her, Han looking smug, Luke cheerful. "I'd do the same for you," she says, and tucks a stray strand of her hair back into its braid.

"I know," Luke says. "Someday you'll have to introduce us properly."

"Not tonight. She's got her meeting." Han elbows Luke. "We'd fall asleep. Bunch of women talking about the good old days in the Senate until dawn? Ugh. I'd rather rebalance the hyperdrive."

"It's starting to develop a shimmy," Luke says, but he glances at Leia. _Do you want one of us there?_

_You don't need to be there to find out what happens._

Getting back into the pace of life on an Alliance base means that by one hundred, Leia's ready to wrap herself around Arala and fall asleep on the floor in the small, secure office room, waiting for Mon and Amilyn. There's caf steaming in front of her. It won't do her any good at this point, but she drinks it anyway to have something to do with her hands.

Mon Mothma comes first and embraces her. "You're looking well."

"Thank you. You, too." Leia knows she's looking stronger than she did before she left for Dagobah. She's reacquired a few grooming habits and let others slide beneath the combination of Jedi-Senate robes she's wearing because they don't matter as much as they used to. She keeps her hair braided tight to her head in a mourning crown that won't give any opponents an advantage over her.

Mon Mothma looks like she's been running most of the Alliance's political side of things while Leia's been running around a swamp waving a sword: her eyes are tired, like Bail's sometimes were at the end of a long debate, and her normally perfect hair needs a trim. She still has the personal gravity she did on the Senate floor, however worn she seems.

The Alliance has never had the strongest diplomatic corps, relying on "But we're on the side of the people" to hold the line. When the people don't see it that way, things get a little complicated. Leia feels a little bad for leaving her in the lurch, but there are other people who can speak to politicians. Nobody else can talk to Arala.

Arala greets her as an old friend, though she hadn't been on Yavin. Mon has been in Leia's thoughts enough recently that she's not new to her sister. "You are beautiful, lady wolf," Mon says, extending her hand.

"She says much the same of you," Leia says fondly.

"And much grown since the holo I saw. How do you keep her fed?"

"I'll spare you the details and say, 'Hard work.'"

They share a laugh. Leia feels a few inches taller than she has since she left Yavin. There is a tap on the door and Amilyn enters, wearing soft lavender.

It feels like a council of war, now. It feels like Breha should walk in at any moment and begin the meeting. Leia's throat closes in grief. Arala nudges her hand.

Mon asks, "Are you all right?" in an echo of the voices in her head, worrying at her.

"For a moment I thought I was at home." She runs her hand over her face. She says and sends the next, because it applies to more people than the ones she can see. "Then I remembered the truth: anywhere I'm with the three of you, that's home, and it doesn't matter what planet we're on. I'll be all right. There's work to do."

Amilyn gives her a sad smile. "And you wonder why I wanted you on my X-wing."

Leia ignores the heat that brings to her cheeks--Amilyn had her on her X-wing, doubly so--and goes for the meat of the discussion. "Skywalker has recruited a possible Imperial traitor. I can't divulge their identity, and we don't have proof that they are trustworthy yet, except that they permitted our escape from Cloud City. But if they prove reliable, they may be an asset."

Mon straightens. "Every defector brings us strength."

"They're not going to defect." Perhaps Leia says it too forcefully. The last thing she can imagine is Vader in this quiet room that is almost home. "They're going to work to destroy the system from within and promote republican interests where they can identify them."

"Who is this person--no, of course I don't want to know." Amilyn waves away her own question. "But I can't help wondering. Someone who's sympathetic to the Alliance, moved by the resurgence of the Jedi, obviously. Did they reach out to you personally?"

"Yes." Leia swallows back the horror of those moments and the memory of the inside of Vader's head. "But I don't know where to tell them to begin. I haven't been following reports and I've let my some of my contacts lapse."

"No one else could learn to work with Arala and the Force," Mon says. "You two--and Luke, and Krayt--are our Subcommittee on Supernatural Affairs, and if you are sometimes closeted with ambassadors extraordinary and plenipotentiary for months at a time, what of it?" She smiles, inviting Leia to smile back.

"They need a longer designation than that." Leia smiles, thinking of what Yoda could manage with the twitch of a finger. "But I take your point."

Gently, but with transparisteel under her voice, Mon asks, "Does the Imperial potential fall under the purview of your subcommittee, Leia?"

It's the question she's been dreading. "Yes." There are other Force users in the Emperor's top echelons, and it could be one of them, any or all of them. Only the most heart-blinded fool would assume that the most prominent Force-user of all would be drawn to the Alliance in any way.

Unless they knew the secret.

Mon has been in the Imperial Senate for decades. The right decades, now that Leia knows what she knows, to have met people when they had different faces. Leia writes a note on a corner of flimsi and hands it to Mon: did you know Sen. Padmé Amidala's lover?

Mon's mouth presses into a small, firm line and she nods. Aloud, she says, "We will give you what backup we can, naturally. Pure power doesn't equate to a knowledge of political dealings. One can't run into situations brandishing a lightsaber, order everyone to their knees, and demand they all get up and salute the Republic instead of the Emperor."

Mon writes back: and his wolf.

Leia forms the name of Anakin Skywalker's wolf without saying it. Puk, rhymes with luck, not good or bad until it's in play. She remembers the queenwolf's mind from one flash of his memory, as bright and nurturing as Arala will be in her full strength, reaching out to span the galaxy and bind a battalion into a pack. A little boy had named that wolf, one who didn't know the word for hubris.

When Leia looks at Mon again, she knows that Mon knows who Luke is to Vader, that the Alliance has its own Skywalker and leggy queenwolves roaming the halls, charming them all into a pack of a different sort. She says, "He's not his father."

"No one is, until the moment comes when there is no one else for them to be." Mon shakes her head. "You learned what went so wrong, I hope."

Amilyn asks, "For whom?"

"For Luke's father," Leia says. "Yes. We learned how to avoid those mistakes so we can make our own instead."

Mon nods. "What more can anyone ask than that?"

Something as cold as 0300 on Hoth moves in the back of Leia's head, dark and huge against her thoughts like a Star Destroyer with all the lights extinguished. "I have to go," she says, standing on autopilot. "Something I ate."

"I'll walk you," Amilyn says.

Arala shoulders her aside smoothly.

"I won't be alone," Leia promises her.

She reaches their quarters just as Luke and Krayt do, just as Vader asks, _Will you speak to me?_

His internal voice is smaller, gentler than she remembers, or she is so frightened she is shielding and barely hearing him. Whatever it is, she can bear this with a wolf on either side of her and Luke in front of her, gathering emetic supplies. _Yes._

 _He yet lives._ There is weariness in those words that goes beyond what she would have expected of him. Without meaning to, she reaches toward him as she might toward any ally, to help him into a chair. However many parsecs separate them, her sense of him is that his skin is slick under her hands with bacta and pained at the thought of touch, but he leans into it still.

Leia keeps her mental voice calm. _It is too early to slay him. Slay him now, and which Grand Moff would take his seat?_

 _They would all try,_ bitterly. _They would push me to it. They would push each other up a hill of corpses, never looking down._

_So not today. What can you do to help us tomorrow?_

_A prisoner convoy leaving Chandrila at 2300 has half the normal guard compliment due to local festivities,_ with some satisfaction. _No one harmed there._ _Great neutral Mandalore_ \--oh the bitterness in those words-- _and her finest son are reporting to me tomorrow about the ongoing strife with the Hutt clan. You'll need to deal with them, Padmé._

There is a moment of nothing, as if he doesn't realize he's called her by her birth mother's name, then an image of Padmé Amidala's dead face, peaceful, then her face in agony, choking. Then he cuts the connection.

Leia falls back on the bed, her hands over her eyes, weeping, unsure whose tears they are. Luke holds her until the tears pass, until she can clear her nose and wipe her eyes. _I hate him,_ safely silent, so that no one else can hear who she's discussing.

 _I know,_ Luke says. Krayt puts her heavy, warm head on Leia's belly. _Command needs to know about the convoy. I can go._

 _And the Hutts?_ She doesn't want to let him go, and doesn't want to beg Han for comfort while they're dealing with the problem Han more-or-less started in the first place. If he'd never gotten mixed up in Hutt business, he'd never have had a ship good enough to make the kind of runs that caught General Kenobi's eye. If he'd never, if they'd never, if. It was as useless now as the recrimination she'd caught from Vader.

_I can remember to tell them two things, I promise. Will you be okay, you and Arala, or do you want Krayt, too?_

Ord Pardron is much warmer than Hoth, but the last thing Leia wants right now is to be alone. She sends, _Pack_ and is half-buried in wolf before Luke gets up.

She manages to drift off on wolf-thoughts at some point because Han sends _Just me_ when he gets in. The wolves don't make space for him, for once, and he sounds a little put out by it, but he snuggles up next to Arala. "If we ever end up somewhere as sticky as Yavin again, I'm getting separate quarters, your Majesties," he tells them sleepily.

"Like hell you are." Luke hugs him tightly.

Leia dreams she's Padmé Amidala, dreams she's stroking queenly Puk, dreams she's walking through a city with towering walls, surrounded by clone troopers, dreams she's choking to death, and wakes screaming. Her pack cries her name in four voices, all of them touching her, trying to wake her with wet noses, wet tongues, shaking hands on her face, briskly rubbing her feet--and then she is herself, and still afraid, but not dying. "I can't do this," she tells Luke, and pulls a pillow over her head.

"You don't have to," he says, half-muffled by the pillow.

"He showed me--" she pushes the mess of it at him, trying not to remember it herself, just to get it out of her head.

Luke makes a sound like she's punched him in the stomach. _Yeah,_ he says after a moment. _That comes up a lot._

_That's not an excuse. I don't need to feel that in his head just because I'm talking to him. I don't want to._

_I know. But you remind him of her. Everything does. I don't know why. And then that memory repeats._

_I understand he's evil and insane, but it's been twenty years. He lost thousands of people he loved enough to make part of his pack. Why her?_

Luke sighs and switches to her other foot. _Because of us, maybe? I don't know._

Han helps her unclench her fingers. _Why do you have to talk to him, anyway?_

_Can you imagine Luke in front of the Imperial Senate?_

Han snorts. _Falling apart, yeah._

_Vader has about the same background Luke does, plus a few years of Jedi training to make him think he knows what he's doing, plus a lot of years of running around killing everybody who told him no to make him sure he knows what he's doing. You want him to negotiate with anybody?_

That kills Han's chuckle. _Sorry, princess, I guess this one's on you._

 _As long as the chain of command stays clear, I'll be fine,_ she lies, and lets them take care of her.


	2. Chapter 2

Leia drops in the next command meeting, rising to excuse herself and falling into Luke's arms. "If she's got something that can spread, I have it too," he says, and takes her to Medical, listening to her thoughts the whole way. They aren't solely hers.

Artoo is following after him, which is just as well, as there are orders to relay while Leia talks to Vader. Artoo plugs into the command system via Medical with Luke's clearance and they're still in the meeting, if in a strange way. Command can stealthily taper the staff on bases on three worlds down to skeleton crews and stores to nothing by the time the Empire arrives, and the attackers will be none the wiser. Those command crews can run for it and take no casualties with nothing to protect.

The munitions depot on Skaart is harder, as the Empire is closer. The simplest thing there is leaving behind one fully cognizant sentient, droid or otherwise, to trigger self-destruct that might take out invaders. That will hurt the Alliance, but mostly in the purse.

The Empire is hearing rumors of a growing alliance of gamblers card-sharping Imperial officers out of their wages and running confidence schemes on high officials, bilking them out of their savings. This is clearly nonsense, as no one would dare. No one will take any official notice of it, which is as it should be, even if some of the individuals mentioned in reports have had recent run-ins with Imperial troops.

Luke smiles and makes a mental note to tell Han that Lando's doing well.

Leia asks Vader, _Any larger moves?_ and there is a brief silence.

_There are whispers of a movement to reinstate the Imperial Senate, coming from the Core Worlds. I hear little more. I cannot be seen to hear more without moving to destroy them. I need a reason to tolerate such things._

_You are known as a man of faith. Speak from that faith._

The great revulsion that sweeps through them both as the contact closes burns the edges of Luke's thoughts. _What was that about?_ he asks, but she doesn't know.

"You show no signs of anything contagious," the medic says. "I'll give you a booster for a few vitamins, and you're slightly dehydrated. Perhaps a snack is in order, and a nap."

"I don't have time to sleep, but thank you," Leia says, and nods to the medic.

"If you're losing consciousness--"

"It was the Force," she says, and strides out, Luke right behind her.

How many times will they have to say that in order to cover themselves? How many times will it be true? It is, this time, and she's furious over it. He doesn't blame her. Losing consciousness to communicate with someone she'd rather see dead is undignified at best and fatal at worst. _I can't live like this,_ she shouts at everyone in the packsense who is listening.

Han's running an emergency meeting of his own about Vader's intel and hiding from her rage, which isn't making her feel better but she's not mad at him. Vader's not listening. The wolves didn't do any of it, and they're so, so sorry, their eyes wide and sad and their bellies showing submission.

Luke finds them a storage room big enough to swing a lightsaber in, and far enough from the active areas that they won't draw a crowd, and spars with her until they're exhausted. They sit on the floor, muscles trembling. "I hate you," she says, so tired she sounds calm. "He earned everything he ever gets. All you ever had to do was let me hate him. Let me kill him. And you couldn't do it."

"We should call Master Yoda," Luke says. He has no idea what time it is on that part of Dagobah relative to their part of Ord Pardron, but some problems are worth waking up cranky Jedi for.

"He'll tell me to release my anger. That hatred leads to the Dark Side." Leia groans and rubs her hand over her face. "I can't. Every time he's In my head he dumps all his own anger and fear in there too, and that makes it worse. Dead Jedi children, this time. Did you know?"

Luke sighs. He doesn't want to talk about the fall of the Temple, now or ever. Talking about it won't make it better.

Leia takes out her communit and programs in Master Yoda's encoded link. It takes an age for him to answer. When he does, he looks frowsy and at least as grumpy as Luke expects. "What need you, young Organa?"

"Exactly how fast does fratricide lead to the Dark Side, Master Yoda? I'm asking for a friend."

"Mm. As fast as lying to one's sister, yes. By omission too, yes. Learned nothing, have you?"

Luke says, "We need him." It only feels more true, the more they understand how much Vader's dealing with. There's weakness there, humanity there that the rest of the galaxy can't see, let alone reach.

"Each other, you need more, young Skywalker." Yoda glares at him. "If rescue missions you undertake, dead weight you carry yourself. Put it not on another's shoulders."

"She offered," Luke says. It's a weak defense, but it's the only one he has.

"For the political parts." Leia throws up her hands. "So far none of it's been more than a little bit political--Luke could handle it. A drunken bantha could handle it. It's all been 'Oh, poor me, I destroyed the Republic because I'm evil. I killed Padmé Amidala because I'm evil. I killed Jedi children because I'm evil. I let thousands of clone soldiers die because I'm evil.' I'm glad he hates himself. He should hate himself. I'm not his mindhealer."

"Hatred leads to the Dark Side," Yoda says. They say it with him, because some things are inevitable.

"I'll listen more," Luke says. "So you don't have to, Leia."

"I don't want to listen to him at all. You tell me the hard questions and I'll pass along the answers." She shudders. "I don't know why he thinks he has any right to talk to me. Krayt set up the packbond, not Arala."

"Like Amidala are you," Yoda says. "Face, voice, spirit. Seek her again, he may."

Leia gags and spits into the dirt. "I'm nothing like her. He has to know that. He's been in my mind--he knows I'm not her. He knows I despise him."

"He knows he deserves that from her and from you." Luke hands her his bottle of water, with the sent reminder that sharing water is the next thing to a sacrament in his life. "I'll deal with him for a while."

Leia rolls her eyes at him. "Don't invite him over for dinner."

"Leia--"

"Call me not to bicker at me, puppies." Yoda reaches for the communit.

They both say, "Wait!"

"Why?"

"I don't know how to handle him when he reaches out to me in the packsense," Leia admits. "The last time, I passed out in the middle of a meeting."

"The packsense, the Force is not," Yoda says wearily. "Shielding you are, and strong he is. Get what he wants, he will. Bend you must, to work with him."

"I don't want to work with him."

"Ah, a recording this message is. Back to bed I go." Yoda clicks off the communit.

"I'm sorry," Luke says in the silence. His muscles are starting to ache. "Let's get to a 'fresher before we end up stuck to the ground."

"I'm turning it up to exoskeleton."

"Okay." Between the two of them and the Force, they manage to get off the ground with minimal indignity and into the 'fresher by their quarters before Han is done with his meeting.

Command keeps trying to promote them. Leia's been dodging by saying that they're better off as an independent tactical ops team that's also running a few spies; now that she's also out of the field for health reasons, that will make keeping their low profile easier. They're already on a slightly different set of rules in a somewhat informal command structure. Staggering through the base looking drunk on exhaustion in early afternoon wouldn't do much for anyone's reputation.

They don't have much to protect in any case.

Luke holds Leia up in the 'fresher. She stiffens in his arms and says, "No, not again, you talk to him, damn you."

It is unreal to have her pressed against him, skin to skin, her heart hammering against his chest, and be aware of Vader's voice in his head. _Patrol the moon of Endor soon._

_Why?_

_Make a routine sweep for life-forms that might support your cause. Scout for bases._

_It's remote enough that your intelligence people would notice. We'll have to work our way toward it._ There is a moment. _You are holding her._ There is something like jealousy in his voice.

_You hurt her, earlier, thinking of the fall of the Temple._

That brings the memories back in catastrophic waves, confused and horrible, lightsabers and children and all around, clones who are friends who are brothers who are pack who are not thinking the way they should be thinking--and then Padmé Amidala dies, not breathing, in agony. Luke is shuddering somewhere decades and parsecs away. _It hurt._

 _It hurts,_ Luke agrees. _Don't hurt her._

 _I can't think of her and not think of Padmé._ Living, brilliant, wise Padmé, speaking to the Senate, dying, agonized Padmé, synonymous. It's all too clear how much the images hurt Leia. They hurt Luke, and the woman's face, while increasingly familiar, is not like the one he sees in the mirror.

 _Stop thinking of her. Stop touching her mind uninvited._ He recalls who he's speaking to, the urgency of their mission. _Please. We need your help, but the pain you give her is making her mind shut down to defend her from you._

A silence between the stars. _Tell her I'm sorry,_ gently. _I don't know how to share my mind carefully. I will keep the pain to myself and give better reports._

The admission makes Luke feel more powerful and alive than he has since the Death Star blew, without the undercurrent of horror that came with knowing he'd sent thousands of people to their doom. _Thank you. May I tell her you said that?_

 _Please._ A blink. _I must go._ Silence.

Leia says, "You're back."

"Yeah. He says he'll keep the pain to himself."

"He wasn't trying before?" She shudders against him.

Luke turns up the heat on the 'fresher and runs it for another cycle. They visited the med wing, so they can get away with an extra ration today. "I don't think it occurred to him that you weren't in as much pain as he was, so he didn't think to stop himself from sharing till we said something."

"Ugh." Leia does a quick all-over wash, too brisk to be sensual. She's beautiful even like this. Luke closes his eyes and looks after himself in the same way so they won't run out of time twice. "How can you forget you're in pain?"

"More like he forgot our pain is different." They shut the 'fresher off and wrap up in blankets. It's early for most people, but most people haven't had a trying day and a hard fight. Krayt and Arala will go to the mess for dinner on schedule and someone will look after them. For Leia and Luke, there are passable rations in their quarters and the bed beckons. "He forgot you don't mourn her every second of the day, so the pain that's an old bruise for him is a new blaster wound for you."

"And you." She presses her thumb up his forehead, smoothing down lines between his eyebrows. "Still glad we didn't stab him?"

Luke's stomach is in knots. He's sure hers is, too. All he wants is to be in bed under the wolves and her and Han. "I will be, if we manage to get the bases cleared, if we find something in the Endor system--let's make a note of that, but it has to look routine--if he really is helping us. If the Republic returns and we don't have to send people on thousands of suicide missions to get it there, because his thumb is on the scales."

"I need to eat before my stomach starts digesting itself." Leia leaves the bathroom, stark naked. She's losing weight and she doesn't have much to lose, not after Dagobah. She goes for the ration bars and pulls out two each, one theoretically savory, one labeled sweet. "Dessert first?"

"The sweet ones taste better." Luke has had worse dinners. He knows she's had better ones by orders of magnitude--he's tasted some of her memories of state dinners on Alderaan when they were eating fish for the zillionth day on Dagobah.

Neither of them complain, since they know there's better food not very far away and they're not bothering to get it. By the end of the sweetish bars, some of the muscle tremors have died down. Luke lies on his back, reflecting that the good thing about the quartermasters knowing there are three of them plus two wolves is that when they want to lie in bed without touching each other, it's not a logistical challenge.

Then Leia rolls on top of him, as graceless and demanding as a wolf. "Can you move yet?"

"Sort of." Luke strokes her cheek. "I thought you were going to commit fratricide."

"I thought you were going to have to look up fratricide." She bites his lower lip and familiar desire sings through him, as if it could do anything else with her weight on him. _Have you had lunch yet, Han?_

 _No, I was going to eat in the meeting,_ he sends back.

 _Minor personnel issue. We need Commander Solo to resolve it personally,_ Luke sends.

That gets them a laugh and a _Don't finish without me._

The wolves come in behind Han, their rearguard, keeping prying eyes from the door in case anyone needs a warning to stay away from their quarters after a long spar. By the time he gets there, Luke has lost count of how many times he's tried to make up his mistakes to Leia, how many times her thighs have clenched so hard they blocked his hearing and she's tugged on his hair and flooded his mouth and his mind with something that's pure for a shining moment.

"You're going to break him," Han says fondly as he undresses at speed. "Even Jedi need to breathe sometimes."

 _No, we don't,_ Luke argues, his hands still on her hips.

"He's fine. I'm fine. Just kiss me." Leia reaches for Han, her skin shining with sweat and triumph.

"I don't know how you do it." Han embraces her. The wolves take over the bed like the Empire invades a star system, and with as little regard for the current occupants.

 _Persistence,_ Luke says. Leia whimpers into Han's mouth.

 _You were going to kill him,_ Han says, which is maybe not the best thing to remind her of right then.

Leia laughs, gasps and trembles, laughs again. _He can fix the problems this way._

_This is fixing the problems?_

_This is making it up to her for all the times I was an idiot recently._ Luke is relying on the Force more than a little at this point, but since Leia's not complaining, he's not going to point out that he's tired and that he would like a turn. They can put on a show of perfect Jedi unity for Han until she wants something else.

Han laughs. _You may never be done._

Leia sighs and ruffles Luke's hair. _He can fix the problems when I'm finished. Which I'm not._ She pats his hands. _Give it to me nice and slow, all right?_

Only by the grace of the Force could that be possible when she rolls onto her back next to Krayt and spreads her legs for him. She could not be more slick, more swollen. His mouth is full of the taste of her. When he hesitates a moment, deciding where to put his knees because his legs are still tired, she sends him the sense of her fluttering inner muscles, where and how she wants him. Luke's joints sag for a moment and he ends up on his belly, his face in hers. "Not fair."

"You missed, kid." Han laughs, tugging his hair. "I think she wants you a little higher."

"You didn't--Leia, give him what you gave me. At least it'll shut him up."

"No." She sounds self-satisfied. "I want you to suck him off."

"Sounds good to me," Han says.

Luke collapses on her again and groans in her ear this time. "My jaw's broken."

She prods him in the side. "Where's your Jedi Knight can-do spirit? Fine. Let me roll over and I'll do it."

They start slow, Leia in Luke's lap, his fingers where his tongue has been, his arm bracing her, her mouth on Han and Han stroking her face, saying things that alternate between filth, love, and what might be prayer in a language Luke doesn't know. She keeps her pace easy, as though they don't have things waiting for them, an Empire imploding, an Alliance to guide, as if Luke hasn't been waiting with eroding patience through every wave-crash of her orgasms, as if the Alliance isn't holding their breath against the next time they have to promote Han.

She comes again around him, familiar as the pulse of the universe, and he echoes it back to her to make it better and to make it a question. _Greedy,_ she sends with a wicked smile.

_Han, do you hear her?_

_I heard she passed out in a High Council meeting,_ Han says, his inner voice just as dreamy as his outer one. _Seems to me her Highness gets what she wants today._

It'd been easier to play with fantasy on Dagobah when Han wasn't there and they could make him up completely, along with anyone else they decided to imagine. Luke starts _What if, if I slicked my fingers up and filled you more._

Leia shivers and thrusts down on him harder, her muscles clenching again. _Might be nice, if you wanted to. Do you?_

He finds the answer in the question, which is that he wants to tell her what to do, just for a few moments. _Not that, no._

She says, "Mm," out loud, not entirely in response to him. Han hisses through his teeth, breathing shallowly, like he wants this to keep going. But Han only walked in on the end. Han's not aching all the way to his toes from sparring before and during.

 _This is too much,_ Luke says.

Leia says, out loud, "Hang on," and puts a blanket over Han. He makes a surprised noise. She turns in Luke's lap, up and off and then in again, so she's hugging him and they're forehead to forehead. "Is this all right?"

He can't tell whether he still wants sex. His stomach is tied in knots and the urge is fading fast. He hugs her tightly, burying his face in her neck. "I thought that was what you wanted."

"Yeah, but it wasn't what you needed. C'mere."

They all end up on the bed, Han looking a little less bewildered by the moment. "Okay," he says, when Luke gets between them. "Good to know."

"Good to know what?"

"Even Jedi have bad sex sometimes."

Luke frowns. "That wasn't--well, I guess it wasn't great."

Han pats his shoulder. "As bad sex goes, it was pretty great bad sex. I'm going to jump in the 'fresher and get back to work. You guys okay?"

"We will be," Leia says.

When the door closes, Luke sighs. "It wasn't that bad. Was it?"

Leia strokes his cheek. "Hey, I got what I wanted. You couldn't tell me what you wanted."

"Of course I couldn't." Luke can feel his face heat up. "I mean, I did that, and look where we are with--" he can't send a scentname in a spoken conversation, but he doesn't have to.

"You mean, with you realizing things weren't working, taking over some of the mess I don't have to deal with all of his crap all the time, and trying to help me feel better?" Leia smiles at him. "Yeah, look at that. What a big mistake you're unmaking."

"Still." He feels guilty that he'd wanted her so badly despite all of the complications.

"Still. Can I kiss you? I haven't hit the 'fresher yet, so my breath's a little--" it's a lot, and so is his. Because she'd wanted him too, and wanted Han, who comes out of the 'fresher fully dressed to find Leia and Luke making love again, rocking together and sharing thoughts and feelings, tightly shielded from the rest of the base, shielded even from Han.

Luke sends, _Sorry_ and tries to keep sensations out of it but there might be a slick, teasing finger around the edge.

"Next time," Han says. "Mind if I watch?"

Leia reaches vaguely in his direction and squeezes his hand when she comes.

Luke shudders and makes a sound against her mouth. Han rubs his shoulders and it's a good way to remember he only has one body. "You here with us?"

"Yes." Leia says it with him, and they laugh, but it helps to bring the shields down so the rest of the world can exist again.

Everything goes pretty well until the bounty hunter takes Han on Lothal.


	3. Chapter 3

It is an internal matter for the Rebel Alliance that Commander Han Solo has been abducted, but Commanders in the Alliance fleet meet with misfortunes of one kind or another all the time.

They can't afford to stage a rescue mission of the caliber it would take for the Alliance to infiltrate Hutt Space--namely Tatooine--on an official basis just because they know that: at the time the message was sent, Han was alive; there is a death mark on his head for nonpayment of debts due to Jabba the Hutt because he has been serving the Alliance faithfully instead of paying those debts; there is a long-standing Skywalker family hatred of Hutts for damn good reason and the youngest member of the family--and his relative, who is still not known as such outside the Alliance's medical records--can do something about it; Han is pack.

The Alliance can do nothing. The Alliance's tactical ops team, on the other hand, has been training for something like this. It starts with removing several layers of undercoat from Arala and Krayt so that they won't overheat in the light of two suns.

Lando goes first and fastest, because he is or was the kind of person who'd take a job with a Hutt. Chewbacca wants to be by Lando's side, but he's too well-known as Han's partner. Someone would spot him immediately. The wolves say Lando's conscience is still clean enough for them. He sends them a filthy note when he has a break where every lewd act is a code for how they're doing. Han's alive, chained to the Hutt, drugged, injured, and grumpy, which is going to make for a short captivity.

Leia writes back to Lando that he should keep going, orgasms always make her cramps feel better when she's menstruating, and that makes her cycle shorter. That's a lie, since she hasn't had a cycle since her first. Why would she? But people on worlds with less modern medicine believe anything.

They consult with Master Yoda via communit on the way to Tatooine. "Mindtricks, mm, work not on Hutts."

"Fine," Luke says, his hands in fists at his sides. Leia can just see him in the side-by-side seating of their ship. The _Falcon_ is safely on base where the Hutts won't see her. "All I want to do is kill them."

"Anger--"

"I know, Master, I know." Luke doesn't calm down with the reminder.

"Mindtricks must work on some of the species on Tatooine," Leia says.

"Sure," Luke agrees. He taps his fingers on his knees, counting out of rhythm with the tapping. "They work fine on humans. Jawas, probably. Not so much on Tuskens, or Krayt dragons, the real ones, so we'll stay out of their way. I don't know what we'll find near the Hutt. They usually have interesting friends."

Yoda sighs. "Assume you must, that you must talk your way through."

"That's what I was going to do anyway."

"Lie not to me, young Skywalker." Yoda sighs again. "A fight you seek."

"They've got Han!"

"Unfortunate, it is."

Leia glares at Master Yoda's image on her viewscreen. "He's our friend."

"Friends, are you? Good friends, yes."

"You know what I mean." She's not about to thump the viewscreen, which wouldn't hurt Master Yoda and would just make her life more complicated, but she's tempted. "He's our pack and of course we want him back safely. You must understand that. Even normal Jedi have friends they want to see safe."

"We did," Master Yoda agrees, and sighs.

Luke looks up with his infallible sense of when something is about to turn into an argument about Vader and says, "So there's nothing else you can tell us about Tatooine?"

"Grew up there, I did not. No more do I know."

"Thanks anyway."

"May the Force be with you," Master Yoda says, and cuts the connection.

Luke turns the comm off, grumbling under his breath. "If we take the droids, they'll be broken down for parts before you can say 'Jawas are a menace.'"

"Do you have friends we can contact?"

Luke shudders. "My only real friend was Biggs, and he died in the attack on the Death Star. There are people who'll recognize me, but that just means they'll call the Empire if they see me. That won't do us any good."

She takes hold of his chin. "So how do we make you look like you're not a farmboy from out past Anchorhead anymore?"

"I don't know!" Luke throws up his hands in frustration.

"Hey, hey. Your holo's all over the galaxy, just like mine. It's not just the jerks from back home looking for you to claim a reward." She kisses his cheek. "We'll find a way in that isn't 'Look at the Jedi and their wolves.' I promise."

Before they get any farther, Luke freezes. Leia can feel that he's talking to Vader. From the cargo compartment behind them, Krayt sends, _There is an election on Bothawui in three weeks. It will be permitted._

Leia asks, "For what, mynock catcher?"

 _Provincial representatives_ is the answer, not Krayt's words, because she doesn't really know what they mean. Leia doesn't blame her. The wolves are getting an education in civics, but it's pretty abstract stuff for wolves, and this is far afield.

"What about the next provincial elections? What if Ryloth attempts them?"

 _Perhaps,_ relayed through Krayt, who sneezes. _It will be a case-by-case basis._

"You can't run a Republic that way."

 _No one is running a Republic yet,_ Vader tells her directly, his mindvoice clearer and warmer than she had let herself remember. _The small liberties allow for larger ones later._

 _It is a reasonable plan,_ she agrees. _Let the Bothans have some freedom and they will want more._

 _You do not entirely disapprove._ There is something close to pleasure in his voice. It sends a chill down her back.

 _I must go._ She puts her shields up as strongly as she can, and he says no more.

Luke is quiet a few moments longer, and when he speaks, he does not quite smile. "You're all right?"

"Mostly." She shivers.

"He didn't hurt you?"

"For once, no." _He just--_ she doesn't have words for the distress she'd felt, but she doesn't need words with Luke. She shows him.

He sighs and takes her hand. "He's not good at emotions."

"And he's not good at controlling his anger. We've met, thank you."

"I meant--" _you remind him of Padmé._

_Astonishing._

_And he has no way of dealing with that._ Luke sighs again.

Leia puts her face in her hands. _I don't have time for this level of disgust right now. Tell him I'm not talking to him until we have Han back in however many pieces we get him._ It is one thing talking to Vader when she's Princess Leia Organa, Jedi of the Resistance and late of Alderaan. When the next stop is a hut on Tatooine, she already feels naked and far too alone.

 _I'm sorry,_ Luke says.

 _This, at least, you didn't do. Don't worry about it._ She kisses his cheek. _I forgive you for dreaming of me all the time we were apart. That was the Force telling us to find each other and be stronger together, and look, it was right._

He smiles crookedly. _If you knew how many times I dreamed of taking on Hutts, before--_

_For our grandmother. For the Skywalkers before her, and the Darklighters, and everybody else they've ground into the dirt on every planet. And, this time, for Han._

_Yes. Of course._ Luke grins. _I know that part. All I don't know is how we're going to do it. Yet._

The next day Leia walks into Jabba the Hutt's palace in a helmet that obscures her features and a robe that sweeps the ground, cinched tight around her waist and padded so that she has shoulders that appear somewhat impressive and a bosom that appeals to a Hutt even with a neckline at her actual neck. She has two queenwolves on chains, ready to break free in opposite directions the instant she needs them. In the mask, her breathing is low and harsh. When she introduces herself at the door of the palace, the name is a truth and it burns her tongue.

She stands before Jabba, overheating and miserable, her head held as high as it ever was on the floor of the Senate, her hand on her lightsaber, and does not give her true name.

"Mighty Jabba, I am the daughter of Darth Vader and you have a trinket of mine. I will pay you the price you asked for him a cycle ago if you can prove you are returning him unharmed."

Han is definitely not unharmed. She can see the bacta on his leg along with the chains. She can see just about all of him, since he's wearing a chrono, a handkerchief, and a liter of oil, along with a collar and shackles. He looks as uncomfortable in his almost-nothing as she is in her entirely-too-much. Someone's going to pay for this.

The room convulses in laughter, Jabba first and last. "You lie. No child of Vader would be so short."

"You'd be surprised," she says under her breath. She lets Jabba have his moment. The more they laugh, the closer Luke gets, sneaking unseen while the guards watch the show. Krayt and Arala are at the ends of their chains, _ready/waiting_.

"Gracious Hutt," she begins again, "let me buy this hairless buffoon from you. He is unworthy of your time. He is as nothing beside the beauties around you, but he completes my collection."

Through his drugged haze, Han winks at her. She feels slightly better about the getup and the name. They'll find a way to explain it to the Alliance--"There are only so many ways to look scarier than a Hutt, and Mos Eisley Spaceport doesn't have a big selection of costumes" is Luke's favorite.

"That price was the price last year, buffoon or not," the Hutt says. "It's twice that now."

Leia has four times as much on her because Hutts are Hutts.

Another round of cacophonous laughter, and she waits it out. "One and a half times as much," she says.

Jabba yanks the chain around Han's neck and Leia has to clench her fists to hold steady when he falls to one knee and gasps for breath. "Who taught you to bargain, girl? Pay me or the price doubles."

 _Ready,_ Luke says, directly behind her.

"I accept your price, o exalted one," she says, and reaches into her belt pouch for the credit chips. With a slight application of the Force, they spray in all directions, catching the light of the lamps and spinning in midair, mesmerizing everyone in the throne room.

Except Lando, because Luke pushed them both a warning in the Force. When their lightsabers ignite, it takes one leap for Leia to decapitate Jabba, who's barely opened his mouth to protest. Lando's got Han down low, under the guards' wild blaster fire when it comes, aiming for her or Luke. She takes the most prominent spot in the room, atop Jabba's decapitated corpse, and deflects the bolts back toward the shooters while Luke disarms the guards. Krayt and Arala menace the more bestial nasties.

It's a short, brutal battle.

"Enough," Leia yells.

The room freezes, except for Luke, who comes over to the base of the float, blade thrumming in his hand. He pushes off the hood of his plain black robe and surveys the crowd, pointing to each of them in turn with his weapon. "Do you know the name Skywalker?" he asks.

None of them acknowledge it.

"It is my name. You will remember it. This is our palace now. Our syndicate. If you belonged to Jabba, you go free. Skywalkers own no one and no one owns them."

It's a pretty speech while Leia tries to keep her balance on Jabba's oozing neck and people of assorted species stare up at her open-mouthed in her black-on-black. They're there to build a legend, in any case. It doesn't matter if they're borrowing a piece from Vader's to increase their own. "You," she says, and points to Lando, who's looking as astonished as the rest. Good for him. "Did you serve the Hutt?"

He bows deeply to her, making his desert armor look classy. "I took this job for easy coin, not love of the Hutt Syndicate."

Leia shifts her weight. The Hutt's body is an uneasy pedestal. "We want his money and have no time to harvest it. Reap it for us and we will reward you. Steal from us and we will kill you as easily as we slew him."

"Gladly, my lady." Lando offers her a hand down.

She scorns it and leaps instead. The Hutt to the float is no great distance, nor is the float to the ground, with the Force to cushion her. "Swear yourself to our wolves." The great room, while full, is quiet. They have an audience of frightened and curious people, waiting to see where they will leave themselves vulnerable.

Lando backs away a step, then another. "Your wolves?"

Leia gestures and Arala and Krayt run to Luke. They look sleek with their fur trimmed, still huge, big enough to destroy a man between them with barely a thought. "They can read every facet of your soul." There are rumors, at least, about the wolves. With lightsabers at play, the rumors become more plausible.

Lando shakes his head. "I don't have a soul, my lady."

She sneers at him before she remembers no one will see her do it. "Everyone has a soul, fool. What you do with yours is your business, unless you join our business. Then it is our wolves' business as well." She points her lightsaber at him. "Kneel to them or be gone."

He kneels and makes the action look rough, which is as impressive as everything else he's managed. Krayt mouths his head. Lando's breathing is uneven, which makes sense, since this can't be any fun. They talked him through it as a possibility, and he knows they won't hurt him.

Still.

Arala mirrors the action.

On the float, Han snorts with laughter. It's the only sound in the room. Luke sends him several waves of calm, too late, and he dissolves into a coughing fit. The drugs have ruined his sense of dramatic timing.

"Rise," Leia says, holding Lando at saber-point. "Betray us, and you die like the slug."

"Yes, my lady." He bows as beautifully as he did on Bespin.

"Your name?" Luke asks.

"Lando Calrissian."

"Free those who are bound, Calrissian," Luke says, sounding exactly like a Tatooine farmboy who has seen too many holos.

Lando starts with Han, whose eyes still aren't focusing right, and hands him down from the float with all the finesse he'd use for royalty, unfastening his collar before he presents him to Leia.

 _He took care of me last night,_ Han says, his mental voice louder than it's ever been. There's enough affection for Lando under his words that if the situation was any less serious and he was any less drugged, Leia would lock them in a room to work it out for a week or two.

 _He better have,_ Leia says, and takes Han's hand. She unhooks the awful cape from her costume and gives it to him so he has something to wear. The way he smiles at her in gratitude is nearly unbearable, since they're still in the middle of a crowd of deeply unfriendly and unpleasant beings who wish them nothing but the worst.

 _I like him,_ Han sends, as if it's a secret and not something echoing through the packsense and probably the Force loudly enough that Master Yoda might comm them and complain.

Luke sends, _Tell us later,_ but it gets lost in the flood of Han's memory of meeting Lando, which drags them in.

In the memory, the touch of Lando's hand in the loud, filthy bar--how many years ago?--is gentle and unexpected, out of place in such a rough place. "You need a drink?" he asks, like they're already friends, like he already knows Han's name.

"And some company, if you're not busy," Han says, proud of himself for managing to think of it while he's facing someone handsome enough to be in holos. He does okay for himself most of the time, but not this well, and he didn't dare approach this guy with his gorgeous eyes and his easy smile.

Han fights the urge to pat down his pockets to make sure he's not flashing what few credits he has to his name.

Lando kisses him and everything Han's got says yes.

 _Not now, not now,_ Leia yells, but the memory keeps going, loud and strong, no matter how she pushes it away.

Luke swears. _Kessel Depth Charge. Hell of a dead man switch._

Around them, the people who want to take over from Jabba start taking aim.

Lando says, in their heads, _What in the hells is a Kessel Depth Charge? Wait, why can I hear you?_

 _Spice is the best weapon against packs,_ Luke sends. _It's a lust bomb. Try to calm down, please._

Krayt says, _I just wanted--_

Arala says, _He's so--_

One of Jabba's ex-employees realizes they've all been standing still a second too long and charges at them, starting the fight again. Another joins in. Leia, feeling too much all over, cuts the first one in half without thinking about it and takes a hand off the second for his trouble.

Luke says, _Wolf problem. Get low. Stay low. Han, duck, damn it._ He shoves back a couple more eager idiots.

The memory surges. Han says, "We can skip the drink." His voice cracks. He hates himself for it.

Lando says, "No way are we skipping the drink." He smiles again.

It makes Han feel better. Warm all over--so warm, everywhere, warmer than he remembers, even--

 _That's the spice, laserbrain, stay on the floor._ In the palace, Leia stands over Han, who's huddled in the cape on the dirt floor--no, it's a metal lattice. There's something below them. She yells, _Luke, we've got to get the upper hand._ A lamp explodes and there is fire raining down.

It's so hot, everything is so hot. Lando has his hand on Han's cheek, instants hours minutes later, and they're kissing again, not in the bar. Lando has a ship, his own ship, his own quarters, not the fanciest but the doors lock behind him when he enters a code, and he gives Han a code without a second thought, "To let yourself out in the morning, if you want to go," smooth as a hit of pure oxygen.

Han tests it, hopes it's not single-use, but nothing smells off, nothing feels like he's going to get shoved in a closet. Lando's stuff is nicer than slaver-trash but not owner-nice, either. Maybe he's who he says he is and his kisses mean what they say: stay the night, maybe longer, and have some fun.

He's coming in his pants at the least touch. That's not what happened but it's happening.

He wants this so badly he'd follow Lando anywhere, not just onto his ship. He's crying. He doesn't remember crying.

 _Keep breathing,_ Luke says, one hand on Han's too-hot skin, bent over him, using the Force to clear spice from his system. _You can ride out the worst of the spice. I've got you._

Blaster bolts buzz by. Luke deflects them with his lightsaber in his free hand, pauses to throw a few hard-headed idiots against the wall.

Leia yells defiance and cuts someone else in half, her blade sparking another fire to go with the fire from the lamp, which is beginning to smoke.

Lando groans. _This happen a lot? ___

__Luke leans into the healing again, but he can't maintain anything like a trance in the chaos. _First time, but we were warned it might happen. Stay down. We're not through the worst yet._ The memories resume and Lando swears._ _

__No one has ever bothered to be so careful with Han. Sex has been fun, sure, but not this elaborate, not this much of a give-and-take. Nobody's ever kissed their way down his spine to his ass and no matter how many passing compliments he's had, no one's ever spread him open and licked him like that's the whole point of getting him into bed._ _

__He's pretty sure he should be doing something other than pulling on the sheets and swearing and humping the bed, but he can't. All his circuits are blown to hell._ _

__He's coming again, all over himself._ _

__That's wrong, somehow, too soon, somehow--_ _

___It's okay,_ Luke says, his fingers on Han's shoulder and a blazing blade over his head, protecting them._ _

___How is this okay?_ Lando asks. _You guys have a lot of sympathetic orgasms in the middle of goddamn firefights?__ _

___No, but it's fine,_ firmly._ _

__Leia yells aloud for the first time in--it's very hard to track time between the memories and the fight. "On your knees or die!"_ _

__The wolves howl._ _

__A bunch of people kneel, maybe three-quarters of the people still fighting. There are still places where there's fabric or oil on fire, still fools with blasters aimed at them, still sparks from lightsabers, maybe five hold-outs around the room._ _

__Luke shouts, "Peace!" and pulls sand up from beneath the floor and dumps it where the flames have caught. They turn off their lightsabers. Everyone coughs and tries to breathe again._ _

__The memories fill their heads. Han writhes in bliss and Lando holds him, cradles him on his lap, fucks him sweet and slow. There is nothing in the world but the two of them, on and on. It's impossible to focus on anything else._ _

__They have to. They absolutely have to._ _

__Leia finds the throbbing memory of General Kenobi's training, the most embarrassing thing she's ever lived through until now: "The Separatists took your mother hostage and gave her enough spice to fell a bantha, which meant that the moment she got back to our lines, everyone in the packsense knew precisely how good Anakin was at cunnilingus, as if it was first-hand knowledge. We were all impressed and not a little distracted, which left us vulnerable."_ _

__Luke had stared, aghast._ _

__Leia had fought back the urge to giggle hysterically and the desire to excise the part of her brain that housed those sentences. "How do we defend against something like that?'_ _

__"Practice."_ _

__"How?" And there's the hysteria._ _

__"Fight in the grip of desire until it doesn't faze you anymore."_ _

__Luke had said, "But--"_ _

__Leia had said, "Not while you're watching," and General Kenobi had laughed and left them to it._ _

__Master Yoda had been less circumspect, once they'd gotten the basics down, but that was ultimately useful._ _

__It means that in the face of Lando Calrissian, young and supple and wrapped around Han, Leia can still stand and fight back a Gamorrean. Her pants are soaked under her robes but no one needs to know._ _

__Luke is on the floor on one knee, shuddering._ _

__Han cries out, in their minds, in Lando's ear, rocking fast and urgent. The pleasure doesn't stop battering at him, crashing through him. He can't even breathe through it, it's almost frightening and then it is frightening because this isn't normal, it isn't right, it isn't what happened. Lando's overwhelming charm is literally inescapable now, a missed calculation on the Kessel run that means he's too close to a black hole, to all the black holes--_ _

__Han finally passes out, overwhelmed._ _

__Luke stands up, his legs shaking, but he stands. "Enough."_ _

__Cleaning up after the fight is much simpler as their heads clear._ _

__They lay claim to the palace in the name of Leia's assumed identity that she's pretending isn't real, in the name of the Skywalkers, in the name of the right of conquest. She dares anyone and everyone who wants it to come and take it from their proxy, who has had five minutes with a compatible 'fresher to get cleaned up and found a pair of pants that doesn't reek of sex._ _

__Lando wears the title of proxy well._ _

__It's easy enough to find a float and carry Han out like a sleeping prince in a fairytale. He wakes up in their ship in hyperspace after a run through the 'fresher and the application of some of their medkit. With a few hours of sleep under his ear he's cleaner and much less toxic._ _

__Luke is still asleep and recovering in the bunk under Krayt and Arala while Leia's keeping an eye on Han, who blinks up at her, his eyes focusing after a few seconds. He rubs them, then looks at her again. "Hi," he says. "What's the body count?"_ _

__"On our side? None. Lando's back there, working."_ _

__"Sounds good." He reaches up to her and she takes his hand. "What the hell did they do to me?"_ _

__"Spice poisoning." She wrinkles her nose. "I didn't know you could come that many times in a row."_ _

__Han makes a small, pained noise and lets her hand go to cup himself. "Not supposed to."_ _

__"No, I know. We have a bigger problem, actually."_ _

__He gives her a crooked grin. "Bigger than that I might not be up for sex for a month?"_ _

__"You will be. You'd damn well better be, because Arala and Krayt have a crush on Lando."_ _

__Han rolls his eyes. "There's an entire forest of sessile tree people on Onderil Seven who are in love with Lando. They're over fifty meters tall, including tap roots, and none of them can leave their planet. Their Majesties will be fine."_ _

__"In the first place, we need Lando on Tatooine, cleaning up the Hutt mess. And in the second place, there's an entire forest of sexually mature sessile tree people in love with Lando."_ _

__Han frowns. "Oh."_ _

__"Yeah." Leia presses her lips together and feels more like a princess than she has in ages. "We're on our way to the Guardians for their sake."_ _

__Han takes her hand again and squeezes it. "I can watch hyperspace go by. Go rest up."_ _

__"You've been conscious for two minutes," she points out helplessly._ _

__"So?" He sits up. If he's dizzy or hungover, he doesn't let it show much and he's back to being able to keep things out of the packsense. "Go lie down, your Highness. I set their Majesties off. I'd better make sure you're rested up for their presentation at court, right?"_ _


	4. Chapter 4

The Guardian of the Whills welcome Krayt and Arala into the wider packsense as if they've never left. Their mother, Traaiz, greets them with a nose-touch, and Guardian Jan exclaims at how well both Luke and Leia are looking as if she's responsible for their training. "You've taken excellent care of them," she says, while the Guardians' medics look over their sisters. The medics' chamber is white and spare, with tables for the wolves.

They've already checked out Luke and Leia, quick and easy. No diseases, no pregnancy, out of their normal clothes and into simple, easily-removable beige robes. It's been friendly, gentle, impersonal compared to how personal the inspection was, and the procedures that go with getting ready for what everyone says will be a lot of sex.

Being in a place where everyone knows he's about to have sex and is comfortable with it is the opposite of having Han turned into a thermal detonator of Kessel spice and sex and dumped on them. Luke feels slick and strange, uncomfortably aware of his body among strangers. Leia smells a little odd--sometimes wolves trigger sympathetic hormones in their sisters, and she's on different suppressants than normal. He didn't know he knew how she smelled until the base notes of her body changed.

It hasn't been forty-eight hours since they fought their way through Jabba's followers in a haze of orgasms. Luke hadn't been sure he'd finished rehydrating himself from the mess on Tatooine till the medics told him he was all right.

He'd sleep for a week, except Krayt needs him. It's like the aftermath of the Death Star, when he would've grieved, except Leia needed him, and she would've grieved, except the Alliance needed her.

They hold onto each other, and they go on.

"We've followed your instructions as best we could," Leia says. She's glassy-eyed from the bleedover from Arala.

"Thank you for everything," Luke says. Krayt is incredibly distracted by the number of male wolves nearby. Most of them aren't related to her and they smell fascinating.

"You've done well by them," the medic says. Luke can't remember her name. She's calm and she smells like disinfectant. "Entirely within normal weight and strength parameters, and the coat reduction for that undercover mission--well, it looks a little odd but it couldn't be helped."

"We didn't know," Luke says. The image of Krayt trapped on Tatooine, not only stuck in her normal coat but in heat and alone, eats at him despite the low-grade arousal he's picking up from her.

"It could have been so much worse." Leia is as much in his thoughts as Krayt is, and they haven't been able to break physical contact since they landed. Han is getting a last-minute rundown of how to handle things as a pack member who won't be out of his mind with wolflust.

It's good to know someone's going to have a thought in his head, an hour from now.

Krayt sends, _Are they going to mind?_

"You're still beautiful, sweet girl," the medic tells her, and scratches her thinned ruff. "You were lucky, all things being equal, to get out of it with early estrus. And even that, only a few weeks."

Leia leans into Arala. "So we haven't hurt them." Her voice shakes a little. "All the hyperspace, all the battles, all the fish, all the spice, and they're all right?"

"Yes." The medic puts her hand on Leia's shoulder. "Let's get you introduced to some of our wolves' partners before the heat gets any more advanced. Krayt, Arala, if you'd go with Traaiz for me?"

They're at home, here. They know the scents from when they were cubs. They're aching in new ways and wanting things they haven't wanted before, but they follow their mother easily enough through one door while the medic and Jan take Luke's free hand and support Leia through another door, into a dim room where several people in the same simple robes are eating, drinking, and talking quietly. There are gigantic beds on the floor that look crowded together, like there are usually beds there, but there are even more than normal today.

All the people turn and look at Luke and Leia with hungry eyes. They're not all human--two Twi'lek, a sharp-toothed Togruta, a red-skinned Devaronian, a Mon Cal, and Luke's never spent much time wondering what they had in their pants but apparently today's the day he gets to find out. There are a couple of species he doesn't know the name of off the top of his head. They're every gender, every sex, horned and bald and with hair to their knees, bright blue and green and beige and brown and his head is spinning. Their wolves are all next door, a rainbow of scents, black and brown and grey and white-furred, just as fascinating to Krayt.

"Come and introduce yourselves," Guardian Jan says.

This is not her heatroom; these people do not have brothers who want to court her wolf. There are more of them than Luke can keep track of, not because he couldn't count, normally, but because Krayt is with their brothers and she is flirting and sniffing and dodging away again, dancing and feeling wanted.

He doesn't learn any of their names, not because they don't tell him their names, but because they don't stick. Leia's fingers are firm in his, though a few people want to peel them apart and court them separately.

He doesn't know how to meet their eyes. He says, "Hello," and "Nice to meet you," and "How are you doing," like he's in a room of Uncle Owen's friends.

No one touches them. There's a ring of empty space around them.

Leia sends, _We have to do something._

Maybe next time Krayt and Arala won't hit their heat at exactly the same moment. Maybe next time they won't need each other so much.

Maybe next time there won't be a room full of strangers trying to devour them with their eyes.

 _I'm not going anywhere,_ he tells Leia.

 _I'd come after you if you tried._ The image that comes with her words is of her getting up mid-orgy, throwing off the last three people who have tried to charm her, and running down a corridor, her lightsaber in her hands.

Luke squeezes her hand, grins, and tells the next person more or less at random, "So, I blew up the Death Star."

The wolfsister grins back, not realizing his smile isn't really for her. "Oh, that was you, of course, right. Great work out there."

Leia lets his hand go. _This is the easy part, hotshot._

_I know._

Leia tells the man making eyes at her, "Actually, I'm a Jedi."

"I thought--"

"You were wrong."

The door opens and Han comes in. Everybody in the room turns to stare blaster bolts at him. One of the wolfsisters asks, "Who are you?"

He smiles and says, "Hi, I'm their pack. No wolf. Coming to look after them. Name's Han."

A green male Twi'lek--Luke wishes Krayt wasn't wiggling her tail at a dozen wolves and that he could hold onto a name--sneers at him. "That's not how things are done."

"You have a lot of breedings with two queens whose sibs have been offplanet?" Han asks, as smoothly as if he's been speaking wolfpack jargon his whole life. Whoever briefed him did a good job.

Luke sends him, _I love you._

_I know._

The seething mob of wolfsiblings stands down a notch or two. "Well, no," the Twi'lek admits. "But you can't--"

"Interfere unless things get out of hand. Touch any of you. Take my pants off. Yeah, I got the whole speech and I'm not wolf dumb, thanks. Have your snack so you can keep up with my lovers. It's not easy on a normal day and I don't envy you trying it today, even with a whole room full of you." Han grins at the Twi'lek, at all of them. Luke wants to hole up in a den with him and Leia for the next cycle.

Something warm spreads in Luke's stomach. He's not sure whether it's Krayt, his own arousal, or affection. He sends Leia, _You feel that?_

 _What, the urge to hide in a cave with Han where none of these people can find us?_ If Leia had Arala's ruff, it would be standing straight up from her neck. _Maybe we can find him a cub while we're onplanet._

Somewhere nearby, Krayt agrees with that sharply and fiercely. _They'll be fun for today, but Han needs a wolf._

Arala sends, _And Amilyn. And Lando. And everyone in the Alliance. This isn't really our pack anymore._

 _But today,_ Krayt says, the smell of the male wolves around them drenching her thoughts until the words are just need.

 _Now,_ Arala agrees.

"Fuck," Leia says.

Someone drops a plate and it rattles on the floor. Of course they'd use things that wouldn't shatter for snacks before heat, before the wolves come into the room, before there are hands on them and the robes go away. The hands don't matter. The robes don't matter.

Han says, "Gently now."

Leia cries out in pleasure. Luke takes her hand, either physically or with the Force. He doesn't know which, only that she wants this, that Arala wants, that he wants, that Krayt wants. There is a wolf with Krayt and someone's hands on him, a wolf on, in her, someone in him, starting with the same joy as their wolf and he's ready, he wants, he answers their need with his own.

It's just that easy the second time, too. Krayt finds another wolf whose scent pleases her, and she accepts him, she bends her neck for him. Leia kisses him and twines her fingers with his while she seats herself aside a broad Togruta, who smiles at them. Luke's second partner is an orange Twi'lek female, her breasts soft against his chest, the prosthetic strapped to her hips slim and firm.

She asks, "May I kiss you?"

Luke sends, _Yes,_ and she smiles at him.

Her mouth tastes strange, but of course it does, he's never kissed a Twi'lek before. She's gentle, teasing, until her wolf isn't, and then she isn't.

Krayt is in raptures, nowhere near sated, filled and fucked and wanting more. There is more all around her and she will have all of them, for she is a queen. Leia shudders around her partner, her muscles fluttering in bliss, and he groans, stroking her, prolonging her orgasm. Arala teases another wolf and they flirt together, snapping and sniffing at each other, knowing where the dance will lead.

Luke has a body, possibly a human one. At some point he had a penis. He'll find it again when he needs it. There are wolves everywhere. There are bodies all around him, touching and fucking.

"Hey," someone says softly. "Hey, kid. Have some water."

Luke opens his eyes. He's not touching anyone right now except Leia, who's under a Devaronian and has her palm pressed to his. Krayt's in the middle of seducing a wolf. Han is leaning over him with a cup. "Hi."

Han smiles. "Hi. Water, buddy."

It's okay, right then, to let go of Leia's hand. She's in the back of his head and she's happy. The water tastes as good as the best booze anyone's ever given him. He drains the cup and kisses Han's fingers. "Thanks."

"You want something to eat?"

"Hey," one of the human Guardians says. Across the room, Krayt's got his wolf's ruff in her teeth. They're going to get down to it very soon.

"I'm okay," Luke says.

"You sure?" Han asks.

The Guardian pokes Han's shoulder. "Go away."

"You go away." Han elbows him. He's still dressed, though he's red in the face because the room is heated enough to be comfortable for everybody who's naked. "I'm talking to Luke and making sure he's fine. You can have him when he's damn good and ready."

Luke sits up a little. He wants space, but there isn't any he can have. "Actually, I could use a snack."

"You got it," Han says, and points at the Guardian. "You, give him a minute or I'll feed you to a Wookiee."

For a second, Luke can't remember what planet Chewbacca is on. The threat's enough to make the Guardian pause long enough for Han to grab Luke some kind of dry, salty cracker that tastes amazing and more water. He says, "Thanks," halfway through the cracker.

"You want some more?"

The Guardian's wolf takes Krayt. Luke's eyes cross and he chokes on a bite of cracker. It's all he can do to swallow a sip of water and give Han the cup. "I'm okay, I just--I--"

"I got you, buddy, I got you. Hey, scowly, you want to get your rocks off?"

The Guardian's back, his hands on Luke's hips. "Turn over," he says, his voice low and rough.

Luke moves, with a push. "Don't go," he says to Han.

"I'm right here."

Luke reaches out for Leia, too, sharing the grasp of Han's fingers, the cool relief of the water. She's still riding high, though she'd like some water, too. He'll tell Han when he can think again. It's easier to let himself be Krayt, be Leia, not worry about who's holding onto Han, who's whimpering, whose throat is dry, until someone in the link says, "Water, please."

Han can't get it. His hands are full. He's watching someone and he's worried and it takes Luke entirely too long to realize that the person who's frowning and biting his lip is in fact him.

If he usually looks that uncomfortable during sex, then he's surprised Leia hasn't teased him about it before.

The world snaps back into its normal perspective. The Guardian is--almost--almost--done--there.

It's been a while since Luke wanted sex. Krayt still does. Arala still does.

Luke wants a break, or for someone to touch him gently.

Luke's looking at Han, and his knuckles are white with how hard he's holding onto his hands. "Sorry," he says, and makes himself let go. That's no way to get anyone to be gentle with him.

"You're okay, kid." Han kisses his cheek.

 _Are you still thirsty?_ Luke asks Leia.

_No. Are you still miserable?_

_What?_

_Talk to Bari'it._

The Devaronian sits on the bed next to him, on the other side of Han. Luke hasn't spent any time with members of his species and barely remembers anything about them. He says, "Hi," and wants to cover himself with a blanket, or maybe hide behind Han.

"Hi, I'm Bari'it," the Devaronian says. His horns are trimmed. Is that cultural? Is that a thing the Guardians do? "I had a wolfsister for ten cycles, but she grew ill. My brother chose me five cycles ago."

"I'm sorry you lost her," Luke says.

"This process was the most disorienting thing I ever experienced, and I trained with the Guardians for cycles before my sister matured. Have any of the wolfbrothers linked with you?"

"No?"

He hisses through his teeth. "Foolish puppies. They forget your queen isn't part of the pack. May I?" Bari'it offers his hand to Luke.

"I still need--" Luke glances down, more forthright than he could've imagined being three days before "--a lot of lubricant. If we're doing anything." What Devaronians keep in their pants is predictably dark red and also very large, comparatively.

"You should've said sooner," Han says, and gets up.

"I'd like to suck you, if you don't mind. I know how to watch my teeth."

Luke takes his hand and the mindlink hits.

It's the softness he hasn't expected to find. Bari'it sends his scentname, a mix of growing things and food spices Luke can't identify that combine into something delicious, and Luke sends his back. Bari'it laughs at the sunshine-grease-lightsaber. _Born a Jedi, were you?_

_So my sister tells me._

_Then truly, you are worthy of our queen. May I?_ Bari'it asks again, bending his head.

His wolf nuzzles Krayt. They have been flirting a very long time, for wolves.

 _Please,_ Luke says.

He is in his body, then, and not alone there. Every inch of his skin sings, not only where Bari'it's clever mouth touches him. Han comes back, and rather than stand guard or try to push aside an interloper, he smiles. He doesn't have the trick of being in someone else's head. Luke will send him this joy some other time, when they have the time and the strength to share it. For now, Leia feels it too, the ease of being taken care of, and it buoys them both.

It is as easy to spread his legs and arch his hips as it was in the first moments, to say, _Please,_ again, and know that the right people hear him, the people who want to know that he is happy. Han's fingers stroke inside him, where he is several kinds of slick and needs the lasting help.

They can do this, all of them together.

Leia sends him, _They're all ours, if we want them._ Arala is keeping score. Luke still doesn't know how many people are in the room, but she knows how many wolves she's had, and how many Krayt has had. Thanks to Bari'it's courtship, Arala is winning.

 _I don't have a use for all of them._ Luke runs his fingers down Bari'it's hairless scalp. _Only the ones who want to follow us._


	5. Chapter 5

Leia wakes in Luke's arms, aching, hungry, and thirsty. Han is awake before she can do more than open her eyes and groan, offering her caf and something baked that smells sweet and mild. "Morning," he says.

"Is it?" she asks. The caf turns her stomach, but the baked thing is soothing, and she can use the sustenance. They're in the dim room where everyone had gathered for the heat, but the Guardians are gone. She's glad. They were courteous enough for people who wanted nothing from her but sex. She doesn't want anything from them, either, except a conversation with Bari'it that isn't punctuated by gasps.

Han shrugs. "I don't have a clue. Maybe. You hungry?"

She considers the question. "I want to sleep for a day or two and bathe in bacta."

He hisses sympathetically. "That bad?"

Leia shifts a little. She's sore, but not hurting. "Not bad, really. Just--" She pats the bed next to her and he sits. She puts her head in his lap. Luke rolls towards them in his sleep, so she edges over, pressing against him. She's getting crumbs in the bed, but what the hell. "I don't want to do that again."

Han thinks of at least three snappy things to say and puts them aside before they make it as far as his mouth. She can see them behind his eyes, one after the other, and in the quirk of his lips. "No?" he says eventually.

"We should have our own pack." She buries her face in his stomach and breathes in the familiar scent of him. "If you had a wolf."

"Wild rancors couldn't drag me out of your pack, your Highness." He strokes her hair and she wonders how long it's going to take to brush all the sex-tangles out. "But it's not up to me whether a wolf chooses me, or whether I get to meet one."

"There are ways. There are packs. The Guardians don't have the only wolves." She wraps her arms around him and holds on, opening her mind a little.

She'd known heat would be like that from the first day. It's the equivalent of a royal duty: she doesn't have to like it to know it must be done, and done well, for Arala's sake and for the sake of the pack.

The distinction between liking something and enjoying it in the moment is bright and sparkling as Kessel spice.

Han rubs her shoulders. _You did well by her. You both did well._

_It would have been easier if they hadn't been strangers._

_Would it?_ The image in his head is of a mess hall filled with the command staff of the Rebel Alliance, cleared to be a heat room and strewn with emergency sleeping bags, then tidied up in the morning with everyone nodding to each other over caf as if nothing had happened the day before.

 _They're ours._ The word has resonance on a human level and a pack level. Leia has worked with the Alliance enough to know them and trust them with her life. She trusts the Guardians to know wolves, but she doesn't trust them with herself the same way. _They would walk through blaster fire for me, and I for them. This--_ she doesn't look up to gesture at the disordered room _\--this is easy._

_I don't know if anybody else is Force-sensitive. I'm sure not._

_The packsense is not the Force,_ and she's so glad they didn't learn that particular phrase with Master Yoda's diction. _The Guardians use wolves to open themselves to the Force. It's not a prerequisite._

_Still, I don't think they'd want me._

Leia pokes Han in the side. _Giving up the battle before you even start, Commander Solo?_

_Ceding the field to people with more training._

_Oh, so you liked watching and passing around the water?_

He pats her shoulder and murmurs, "Gotta use the 'fresher."

Leia sits up and lets him go. "I never took you for a coward."

Han stops. Luke startles awake next to her, and asks, "What's up?"

"I guess I've been too much of a gentleman," Han says, his voice sharp. "No, your Worship, I didn't like it, but it's what you two asked me for, same as you asked me to join your army and then went away. I stayed, and I did my part, because you asked and what you asked for was the right thing to do. I ended up so full spice there's still glitter in the corners of my eyes and covered in Hutt slime because they were trying to get to you. And then here, holding your hands for as long as it took. All that, for you. And you want me to start saying no to you now."

Luke stumbles, getting out of bed, and Han catches him. Leia catches him, too, but not with her arms. "What did you do?" Luke asks, stricken.

"I said he should get a wolf and never leave us." _She said I'm a coward,_ overlapping.

Luke gets back on his feet. "Did I oversleep or is this a nightmare? Back up and start over."

Leia is sure her face is bright red with a blush, but being misunderstood should be nothing compared to what they've been through in the last week. "Heat would have been much easier if we had our own pack."

"Well, yeah," Luke agrees. He's flushed, too, at the memory of all the people they met for the first time yesterday under extremely awkward circumstances. "But our pack is just four people now. That's only barely enough, if everyone had a wolf who was of age, and the chances that we could find two male wolves who'd be compatible with Han and Lando and Krayt and Arala aren't great."

"It's a place to start."

"Not if you're going to do it by insulting me," Han says. "Why would I stick around for more of that?"

"I just wanted you to listen," Leia protests.

Luke sighs and sits on the bed carefully. _You just wanted him to respond to you._

_Yes, fine, so what?_

_Maybe I spent the last twenty hours looking after you while other people fucked you silly, just after a Hutt dragged its slimy fingers all over me, and I could use someone being nice to me for once._

Leia throws a pillow at him with the Force. "How nice do you need me to be when I'm telling you to find a kriffing wolf so we never, ever have to do this again?"

"A little nicer wouldn't kill you." Han throws it back.

Luke intercepts the pillow and sits on it. "Well, you could both be a lot nicer to me. I'm having a terrible morning. I haven't been awake for three minutes and already people are yelling in my head."

Leia tackles him onto the bed and pulls Han in too. "Hey," Han says, only sort of protesting. "What's the problem now?"

"I wasn't ready to let you go."

He frowns at her for half a second till Luke kisses his cheek and asks, "Did you really have to get up?"

"I didn't come to this planet to get yelled at first thing in the--whatever time of day it is." Han tousles Luke's hair. His voice is softer. "Not even by princesses who had a rough ride yesterday."

"It wasn't--" she bites back the end of the sentence. "No one was particularly rough."

Luke hisses. "That's not saying a lot."

"They weren't all as gentle as they could've been." Han sighs. "Yeah, I wish I could've done more than just watch. If I had a wolf, it'd be better for one of you. And the other? What if both their Majesties went into heat at once?"

"I don't know," Leia admits. The possibility that things would still be difficult is small and cold in her stomach. "We'll work it out. It would still be better." She buries her face in her shoulder to hide her smile. "At least if you were wolfdumb, you wouldn't be able to fight with Amilyn for a few hours."

Han snorts and kisses her forehead. "Don't bet on it."

When they finally make it out of the heat room and talk to the Guardians, Master Isanren, the head of the Temple, is sympathetic to their request for consideration for a wolf but about as flexible as Yoda. "We only brought you the queenwolves because Guardian Jan had been plagued by visions for months and they had failed to find partners among our members," she says sadly, but not very sadly. "If we ever have an instance of similar visions, we'll contact you, but it's unlikely."

"Thank you," Leia says, and bows to her. Then a cold shiver she knows too well goes down her spine, interrupting her. She says, "Excuse me a moment, I'm indisposed."

Her indisposition is Vader, announcing himself with the packsense equivalent of a throat-clearing in her mind. _Ah, you're available._

Leia does not blush. _We've been busy._

 _I had noticed,_ wry, and how she loathes him for being amused at her discomfort.

 _What do you want and why do you want it from me and not Luke?_ She does not snap at him to ignore what she has been doing and what life with wolves entails. Let him know what he knows; she knows far more of him than she ever wished to in that respect, and it does not mean she cares for him.

_Luke is exceedingly little help with former Galactic senators, and I have intercepted three. At least one of them is an ally of yours._

Leia shudders. _I have no allies among the senators,_ she lies.

He laughs. She can't imagine him laughing, truly laughing, but like this, she can hear him, and it doesn't feel like a falsehood. _You lie so much more smoothly in person. I can't give them all amnesty with impunity._

_You don't want to, you mean._

_Your Highness, I am not my own master in every respect. Too many lucky escapes, and he will notice. He has already questioned me at length about both of yours._ He does not seem to resent those questions, or the actions preceding them.

_Blame an underling. Don't you always?_

_They would pay with their lives, and for what? There are no escape routes to be had. The senators will be lost with all their political capital unless your Alliance has a team in in the planetary capital of Ord Mantell in three hours or less with covert operatives capable of infiltration and extraction._

Leia does not swear aloud. _And you didn't tell us sooner!_

_You were busy when the situation arose._

She doesn't swear at him either. No curses seem equal to the task. _I am busy now._

 _Then I will lead the information extraction and keep it painless and short,_ he promises.

Her mind shies away from the memory of the Death Star, of being the junior senator in his pitiless hands when there was no one to beg him for mercy. _I will send a team. Treat them as you would me._

She feels his guilt drown his thoughts before he forms a proper acknowledgment. It is better than any simple "Yes" would be. Whatever twisted complex of emotions he carries regarding her, she has a complementary structure; if he insists on speaking with her, she will not hesitate to make him responsible for what he has done.

He closes the connection without another clear thought and she bends at the waist, her hand on Arala's head, sure she looks as ill as she's claimed. Luke helps her to a chair. "I must contact the Alliance at once," she says. "A disturbance in the Force. A vision."

The Guardians accept this as readily as Luke does, and for less cause.

Leia's second-hand information is trustworthy enough for them to scramble a team on her word alone, and the word of her unnamed, unknowable operative. The voice-only commlink saves the Alliance command staff from seeing how pale she is after the conversation with Vader. She wishes she could streak across the galaxy to Ord Mantell.

She wishes she could stride as purposefully as usual, but she's still bone-tired.

They stay with the Guardians for two more days, which is long enough to confirm that both Arala and Krayt are pregnant--the Guardians are thrilled, while everyone in their pack is merely apprehensive. On the last night, there is a party to celebrate their imminent departure and the upcoming expansion of the greater wolfpack.

"The pups are going to be a trial," Leia says to Bari'it when he toasts her. He has to lean down to speak to her aloud, but when he whispers in the packsense, she can still hear him.

"Indeed." _Pups are always a trial,_ he says, _but they will allow you a greater pack of your own. Leaving aside the question of where you will find a wolf for your lover._

 _It's not a necessity._ "But also a joy, I'm sure."

"You could foster them here, if your queens were amenable." Bari'it nods to Arala, who is flirting with his wolf. "Your peripatetic life will be difficult with cubs."

Arala's ruff stiffens. _They will be my cubs, no one else's. Krayt and I will raise them._

Leia gets a flash of a makeshift den on the _Falcon_ , which is not Arala's den, nor Krayt's, but which is as close to a home as the pack has, full of wolf cubs.

Bari'it bows to her. "My apologies. Of course." He nods to Leia. "And if you were to visit with your moveable den, you would be welcome here."

She sends Luke a question and he answers with the same feeling she has. "If you were to join us in our travels and our missions, you would be welcome."

Bari'it hesitates. "The Jedi fell because they fought."

"Alderaan and Jedha fell because the Empire grew too strong. They might strike here next."

"As retribution, if they knew me for a Guardian."

"As caprice. They didn't need to know anything of Jedha to turn it to glass."

Bari'it smiles, showing his predator's teeth. "My time is not entirely my own, your Highness. I will speak with my superiors."

"You have none here that I can see," Leia says, and turns away from him, drawing Arala away from his wolf with some difficulty.

 _How many do you want?_ Han asks with an edge in his mental voice.

_Enough that Arala and Krayt are satisfied._

_What about you two?_ Han asks.

Luke is across the room talking to a female Guardian who is at least twice his age whose wolf has no apparent interest in Krayt. The Guardian is intrigued by the tricks Luke has learned with the Force, but she's not charmed with him; not any more than most people are, in any case. _Wolf mating has nothing to do with what we want,_ he sends Han and Leia.

 _And you only get three hundred of us, so you have to be more careful from here on in._ Han sounds a little bitter.

 _We've been nothing but careful, and we wanted you._ Leia squeezes his shoulder with the Force, then his hip. _Bari'it isn't our pack unless he chooses to be. He'll follow if he wants to. If he doesn't, he won't stay in our packsense. It's easy._

 _You'll love them and leave them? You?_ Han laughs in the space between their minds. _Neither of you can let someone go._

 _Wolves can,_ Luke says. _We met all the people here for their wolves, not themselves, to begin with. If all they want from us is our wolves, so be it. We have other work to do._

The missed opportunity on Ord Mantell gnaws at Leia, but they hadn't been ready to leave then whatever the pack customs might have allowed for more mature wolves with established mates. Truly established pairings wouldn't have bothered the pack as a whole at all, only denned up for the duration and checked in with medical staff before and after to ensure that everything was going well.

 _We have other things to worry about,_ Leia says, and tries to put the upcoming wealth of wolfcubs and the threat to her sister out of her mind for the time being. Pregnant wolves can do just as well as pregnant humans up to the very last stages. _The Alliance needs us._

 _You need the Alliance,_ Han echoes back at her.

 _Yes._ Those are the people who would do anything for her. The Guardians would do anything for Arala's sister, but pack loyalty isn't the same thing as personal loyalty.

She needs her own people.


	6. Chapter 6

Technically Luke and Leia are outside of the Alliance's command structure, which means that when he can't stop seeing Rim worlds in his dreams and he's sure the Force is calling to him, he goes, and no one stops him. He's officially undertaking a recruiting and research mission on the Outer Rim, but his version involves a lot more meditating than the normal recruitment crew probably bothers with. This phase of the trip starts with Jakku, which is enough like Tatooine that Luke keeps being surprised there's only one sun. Leia is on a different mission to the Core on Chandrila, working with some of Mon Mothma's people to steady their efforts at reclaiming control of part of their government.

Han's with the Alliance somewhere else--they haven't told Luke where or what, so that if anyone asks, he officially doesn't know. Lando's still on Tatooine.

It's quiet in his head almost all the time except for Krayt. Her pregnancy isn't showing yet. She's eating for a dozen--that's the joke between them, anyway, though wolves almost never have that many cubs--and she flirts with everyone she sees, pretending she's dimmer and sweeter than she is so she can get a read on their intentions.

Almost everyone on Jakku is out for themselves and has no interest in the Empire or the Alliance. Most of the ones who approach Luke want to get him into bed, which he's not interested in. But there are a few with secrets, and a few with hope.

He makes some deals and sends some people to the Alliance. Only the ones who will look into Krayt's eyes and swear to them both that they want nothing to do with the Empire, only the ones who will bare their hearts and necks and bring their fortunes and families with them, because this is a dangerous game.

Leia wants him in the Core with her, but the Force sends Luke visions every night, pressing him further out.

On the next planet, unlooked for, he finds an ally--an old man with a soldier's bearing, mid-brown skin, tidily-cropped white hair and a beard, and scars--who stops in the street of a residential area and kneels in front of Krayt, offering her his hand as if he knows precisely what she is and how to speak to her, mind-to-mind. He has the same demeanor with her that the Guardians do, but none of their regalia.

His Force presence is that of a normal person. _Can you hear him?_ Luke asks Krayt.

 _He's pushing a scentname at me--_ she sends it on to him, and it's a complicated cloud of smoke. Blasterfire, an electric burn that's the same lightsaber as Luke's name, and some sort of solvent, burning.

_Are you sure he smells like a lightsaber?_

_Yes._ Krayt's mindvoice is firm. _He might not know what the smell is._

 _He's plenty old enough. He'd know._ Luke makes sure his robes are covering his weapons, so he can get them if he needs them, and crosses the street. The man is rubbing Krayt's ears as if she's not grinning at him with rows of teeth sharp as vibroknives. "Good afternoon."

"And to you." The stranger straightens up and takes a look around, overly broadly if Luke's any judge. "You wouldn't happen to know who belongs to this wolf, would you?"

"Might. Why would you want to know?"

The stranger's eyes don't leave his face, so he's already gotten an idea of whatever he wants to know about Luke. "Haven't seen one of these wolves since the Clone Wars ended."

 _He was in a pack,_ Krayt says. _It hurts to lose your pack. Can we make him feel better?_

 _How, by bringing him into ours?_ Luke feels her sigh. It's the easiest remedy, and while he can't imagine getting in the sort of situation Jedi General Anakin Skywalker had with his battalion of clone soldiers, he can half-sympathize with the problem. Just one, says the wolf. And then this one, and then another, to make things better.

And Luke looks at the old soldier again. Maybe this is who he's looking for, way out here. "You were in Puk's pack, weren't you?"

The man's eyes narrow. "Don't rightly know who that is, sir."

"One of the soldiers of the 501st." It's not a division he's ever learned about in classes, but he knows how its commander referred to it, straight from his thoughts.

The man straightens. "We need to talk. Buy you a drink?"

"Anywhere she can go is fine by me."

They end up in a park, not far from a counter that serves iced dairy confections. Krayt begs for a taste. Luke tells her, "I have no idea what it would do to your stomach."

"You'd be fine if she's been eating real meat, but if you've got her on survival rations without good protein, I wouldn't." The soldier has a bite of his dairy and lets Luke stare at him. "Don't they tell you how to take care of them?"

"Yes, but not to the extent of which sorts of desserts are all right for them to eat, based on what else they've been eating." Luke ducks his head. "The people who gave her to me assumed I would never feed her anything but the highest-quality foods."

"Never been off their Core World, have they, sir?" The soldier sucks his teeth. "Never dealt with the wolves on the ground, in battle, on a long mission."

"In a swamp." Luke thinks of Dagobah's endless squelching. It seems even farther away from this park than it is.

The soldier looks rueful. "At least swamps have food, eh?"

"There's that."

"Not like your desert." He nods to Luke. "Nothing but sand, sand, and more sand."

"It's never just sand." Luke shakes his head. "It just feels that way."

"Traveled a lot, have you?"

"I grew up in a desert." That's not too specific. Trillions of people live in deserts.

The soldier looks him over again. "Desert boy with a wolf and a lightsaber," he says softly. "How'd you get your name, desert boy?"

Krayt is beside him in an instant. Luke holds her there with a touch. "The same way anyone does: from my family."

"And your wolf?"

"A present. Not, unfortunately, from my family. Though my father had a wolf."

"How about that shiny sword?"

"Parts of it were my father's, but you wouldn't recognize it now, even if you'd seen it before."

The soldier nods and bends over a wristcomm. He reads a code into it too fast for Luke to do more than memorize it--Cerberus Mancha Acne Splodge 7642.

A few moments later, a rangy wolf, white as the soldier's hair, runs up and steals the dairy confection out of the soldier's hand. He doesn't even swear.

Krayt yelps. _He doesn't smell like he lives with a wolf!_

_What does he smell like?_

_Clean._

When the white wolf slows, it--he--prances over to Krayt and shares scents with her. Like his brother, the wolf's scent name is chemical--a specific blend of fuel, Luke can tell that much, but he has no idea what it would power. _Troop transports,_ the wolf shares with Krayt, then Luke. _Out of commission now, but we relied on them._

 _In the Clone Wars,_ Luke says, half a question.

_Yes. With your father, puppy._

Luke chokes on the endearment from the wolf, who means it differently than Yoda ever will. He explains it was "Wolf humor" to the soldier, who says, "Ah."

Then Luke says, "So you served with General Anakin Skywalker in the Clone Wars," and the soldier goes a little pale under his tan.

"It was an honor to do so. Except." The man clears his throat. "Don't know how to tell you this, sir, but--"

"He was a good man until everything went catastrophically wrong?" Luke suggests after a five-second pause.

"Yes."

"May I have your name, soldier?" Luke asks, making himself as unobtrusive in the Force as he knows how to be.

He gets it from the wolf. _Rex. He calls me Vod, out loud, these days._

 _Nice to meet you, Vod,_ Luke sends. He's not sure what to make of the "these days," but he won't argue with a wolf about what his name is.

"I've seen the holos from the Empire. When did you drop the Amidala?" Rex asks, his voice gentle.

"I never knew her." Luke leans into Krayt for a moment and wishes he could reach Leia, wishes he knew what time of day it was where she is.

"An excellent woman." Rex shakes his head. "But you could've run around being an Antilles, same as a billion other people. Nobody would've batted an eye unless they'd known the general and they got up close to you in the right light. Who'd be dumb enough to--" his wolf laughs, and he puts his face in his hands for a moment. "Oh."

"Kriffed coming and going, yeah. It wasn't my choice."

Rex laughs once. "I know that story in my bones, sir. You're looking for a few more rebels, are you?"

"If I can find them." Luke listens to the Force. There's still something nearby, in stellar terms. Whatever he's supposed to find, it's not just Rex. "I'm looking for something else, but I don't know what it is."

"Now that I didn't miss." Rex offers the end of his dessert to Vod, who swallows it. "But I miss having a pack like I miss having brothers."

Luke flushes. "Our pack isn't the same."

"Good."

"It's small, and--and going to stay small. Only people we need."

Rex strokes Vod's ears. For the first time, Luke wonders whether Vod is white from age or genetics. "Guess that means you don't need an old soldier and his old wolf."

"You know more about fighting with wolves than anyone who'll talk to us. The Guardians are afraid of working with Jedi again, and--" Luke clears his throat and then nudges Krayt. _Tell him._

He hears her explanation to Rex and Vod as clearly as if he'd sent it himself, but at one remove, where it does not feel like it is entirely his fault.

Vod hides his nose under his paws. Rex's cheeks go dark and he scowls. "You can't trust him."

"I don't." Luke doesn't add that Leia trusts him even less.

"I don't want to be anywhere near him. I don't want Vod near him." Rex kneels by Vod, who puts his paws on Rex's shoulders and bathes his face. "We already went as many rounds with him as we can survive and we're not doing it again."

"You could come with us and not join the wider pack," Luke offers. "That way, you could help with the strategy and the tactics," he still doesn't know how to talk to soldiers, not really, "and Vod could spend time with wolves, especially after the cubs come, but you wouldn't have to deal with him."

Rex looks older and smaller than he has since he admitted he knows who Luke is. "I'll kill him if I get a chance."

"So will the rest of my pack." Luke shrugs. "I'm not sure they could do it, but they'd try."

"I'm not sure I could do it, but kriffed if that'd stop me trying." Rex stands up again. "Where's your ship?"

In the next system spin-ward, on another planet where the only habitable regions are just as desert-dry as Jakku, Luke is in a market when he sees an orange-skinned Twi'lek woman on the edge of the spaceport who catches sight of Krayt, stares a second, and runs.

Krayt takes off after her, with Luke right behind her, out of the market, into the untracked desert, sending questions. _Why are we chasing her?_

_She's running._

_Why is she running?_

_She knows what I am._

_I could get ahead of her,_ Luke offers, charting a path up a dune with a bit of extra speed from the Force.

_She's not afraid of you. She's afraid of me._

_So much the better._ Luke goes for it, and gets ahead of the woman, his arms wide, before she passes the next dune. "Wait, please."

She pauses, her mouth open, gasping for breath. "Leave me alone."

"Why are you running?"

"You're chasing me." She's out of breath, avoiding his eyes and Krayt's. "Why shouldn't I run if you chase me? Who are you?"

"No one important." Luke lets his robe cover his lightsaber. "My companion won't hurt you." Krayt sits in the sand and lets her tongue loll out while she catches her breath.

 _Much,_ she says.

The woman doesn't react to Krayt. "Go away."

Luke sighs and draws on the Force. "Tell me why you were running."

"I found the cubs. They're safe with me." The woman crosses her arms. "You can't take them."

Krayt is on her feet again in a moment, ears pricked. She hadn't looked dangerous before, but now she looks like she might hurt someone, her teeth showing. _Cubs? Where are they?_

"Where are they?" Luke asks, leaning harder into the Force.

"On my ship," the woman says, her voice dull. "I'm taking care of them. I wouldn't hurt them for worlds."

He thinks of the Guardians. Some of them are Twi'leks, so clearly wolves can reach their minds if they want to. "Where did you find them?" he asks with less pressure behind it.

"Their mother called to me as she died, systems away," the woman says, her eyes and voice distant. "I couldn't let them die. None of them are mine, my brother or my sister, but I can't hand them to a stranger." Her mouth twists. "Not even a stranger with a wolf."

"I don't want to take them away from you," Luke says, but even as he says it, he knows it isn't true. Krayt wants to take them into her pack if they are good enough, with or without this Twi'lek. They are wolves with no Guardians, no Jedi, wolves who could find partners in the Alliance and be hers.

The Twi'lek's hands tighten into fists. "I won't take you to them."

Krayt whimpers. _Tell her I can track them from the scent on her clothes._

_Can you?_

_No, but she won't understand that I've found them in the packsense, now that I know they're nearby._

"My wolf can speak with yours, mind to mind," Luke says as gently as he can. "She would like to see that they are healthy before we part ways."

The Twi'lek bares her teeth at him, sharp as any wolf's. "She'll take them. Bitches do that, I read the files, I know they can. You'll leave me without them again and I'll be alone on this dustball."

"I wouldn't abandon anyone on the Outer Rim if they wanted to leave it, but the only place I'm going is to war." Luke lowers his voice. "I'm with the Rebel Alliance."

The Twi'lek's face goes from orange to a pale yellow. "You have a wolf, and--oh. You're him."

It isn't any more comfortable being "him" than being painted on an X-wing. "Yes."

"And you want my cubs."

"If they want to come with me and my wolf."

The Twi'lek snorts. "They're babies who don't know anything but the Outer Rim and being alone. They think they want adventures and brave queenwolves and wolfsiblings who take on the Empire. They won't believe me when I tell them they could end up dead. They don't know what dead means."

 _All wolves know that,_ Krayt says. _We don't let it stop us._

Luke shrugs. "How old are they?"

"Three, four months."

Old enough to have bonded, if they were going to bond. If none of them chose this woman, then she wasn't going to be their wolfsister. "Will you let them choose their own paths, or will you force them into what you think is right for them?"

She snarls. "They're not even half-grown."

"They're not going to reach their full potential with you if after three or four months none of them has bonded to you." He keeps his voice gentle, but the words must hurt anyway.

"You can't take them."

"If they want to leave with us," he doesn't say "me," because Krayt is the one they will want to be with, not him, "will you really try to keep them?"

The way she closes her eyes is not a surrender, but it feels like the beginning of one. "Are all Jedi so cruel?" She makes the name a curse.

"They probably were, yes. I don't want your ship or any of your money, I swear it."

"What does that matter if you take them?"

There are five thin cubs, leggy and joyful and dancing around Krayt the second the woman opens the door of her freighter. The wolves touch noses, sniff rear ends, nibble ears, nibble tails, everything they can find to affirm and reaffirm that here is a member of their species, and they can touch bodies and minds. The cubs pile into Luke's mind with equal abandon, introducing themselves with scents of sand and ship that he'll pick apart later. He sends back his scentname and they echo it to him with puppy laughter.

Krayt greets them and folds them into her pack, sending her fern-waterfall scentname and inviting them, one by one. They accept as easily as if she was their mother.

The Guardians have various teachings about the size and members of a pack and its strength. More wolves, especially if they're not her cubs, give the queenwolf more authority in the packsense, up to the tipping point. If they're bonded with other minds, that lends depth to the pack.

A small den of cubs does not change Krayt's presence, not by themselves.

The Twi'lek stands by the door, her face impassive. As far as Luke can tell, she can't sense any of what they're sharing.

 _What's her name?_ he asks one of the puppies, a black-fringed male.

He sends back meat that is starting to go sour, but which is still fine for wolves to eat. _Never too hungry,_ he says. _Good two-legs two-arms two-tail._

_That's good. Do any of you talk to her like this?_

_No. She's not a bondmate._ The puppy lets his tongue hang out and puts his front paws on Luke's knee. _Do you have other people in your pack?_

_Not on this planet, but yes. And another wolf._

_Another wolf_ goes through the cubs in a shiver. They get laugh at Krayt's image of Arala overlaid with Arala's scentname and say _Sisters, sisters. Where is she?_

The idea of planets is hazy in their minds. They understand "Not on this ship" and "Too far away to smell."

 _Can we go?_ another cub asks, nibbling Krayt's ear.

 _All of you?_ Luke asks.

They chorus, _Yes!_ with no restraint. He knows they're cubs, that they don't know what they're asking for, and that if he asked Krayt to explain it to them, she would not tell them anything to change their minds.

 _Do you want to bring meat-Twi'lek?_ Krayt asks.

_Yes! Yes!_

_The Twi'lek gets to decide whether she wants to come,_ Luke says, and turns to face her. "I will walk out of here without speaking aloud to the wolves. Any that follow me do so of their own desire. You know where I'm going when I leave this system. It's up to you whether you want to follow them." He glances at the cubs. "You've done well by them so far." As well as she could, on limited resources. They're a little raw-boned, a little hungry, or he would be a little more inclined to finish his mission before he headed back to the Alliance.

Except that parts of his heart are just as hungry as they are.

She is verging on vermillion in her anger. "You wouldn't drag them with the Force, but what were you putting in their heads, all that time you were quiet?"

"Only asking how they've been treated--they're fine--and telling them I know other wolves, which is true." Luke spreads his hands low and empty. He thinks of Vader's hands, black-gloved and just as empty, and all the damage he can do with them.

He's stealing a cargo from this woman, even if she's not bonded to any of them, and she hasn't said a word about payment for the wolves' food. They've been pushing her through the Force the same way he has, whether she knows it or not. She presses her lips together tight. "What kind of revolution goes around stealing?"

"Not this one. It's not stealing when they're children, when they're going to be as smart as you and me, is it?"

"Oh." Her voice shakes. "The holos didn't say that."

Krayt leans on Luke to stop him from shaking too. "Partnership makes them stronger and changes their focus, the same way it makes a Jedi or a Guardian stronger, but a lone wolf is no fool." He rests his hand on Krayt's head. There's love in her mind, the way there has been since they met, bottomless as an ocean and as terrifying.

"But if I wanted to come with you, to get to know them, I'd have to join your rebellion." The Twi'lek looks skeptical. "How do you think you're getting back there with a brand-new pack?"

"I'll manage it." He can't fit all the cubs into his current transport, but this isn't the right time to consult the packsense and see whether he can get a better ride back to the Rebel Alliance. For a moment, he imagines Han coming to get him, but Han's got more strategic things to do than give him rides.

Then Luke imagines some other crew being the first ones to meet all the cubs and all the cubs finding people who are great partners but not Han. Maybe that's a horrible, selfish thought, one no real Jedi or person really concerned with wolves' free choice would have, and Master Yoda would come after him with a stick for having it. Still, he's not going through official channels to get the Alliance's attention. Pack business will take place with pack members first, and at Leia's request, Amilyn can come along too.

If none of the wolves take to them, or one of the wolves decides Chewbacca is its heart's mate, they'll deal with the consequences when they come.

The Twi'lek asks, "What's the pay like?"

"What?"

"In your Alliance. I'm not saying I love the Empire, but I've got to eat, and I wouldn't look good in your cast-off robes." She wrinkles her nose at him. "So, what's the pay like?"

Luke stares at her. "Everyone has enough to eat and drink, and the right gear for what we need to do. It's not a job, it's a rebellion."

"What if I get hurt?"

"We've got bacta."

"Or I lost a limb?"

Luke puts his face in his hands. "Then we'd send you to a surgeon and get you a prosthetic, I guess. I don't know! The day I started, everybody who died, died of exploding in a spaceship. That's not really something you come back from, and you don't ask, 'What's the pay like?' You ask, 'Is it worth it?' and if it isn't, you leave. I stayed."

"And exploded the big one." The Twi'lek shakes her head. "What are you doing with your feet in the dirt of this rock?"

"Listening to the Force. Looking for these cubs." Luke gestures toward them. "Looking for you, maybe, because you did well by them, and you don't have to lose them."

"They won't miss me."

Luke doesn't know the ways of cubs well enough to argue the point. "I can't pay you what your time is worth, let alone what it must have cost to feed them. All I can offer you is a place to go, something to do that's worthwhile, and codewords that will get you through the door, if you want them."

"Not to mention an early grave as so much space dust."

Luke shrugs. "Maybe. And maybe one of the wolves will decide not to bond, and that they'd rather stay with you." The Guardians keep their wolves' bloodlines diverse with some packs of unbonded wolves; if it gives her a face-saving way off the planet with even a faint wolfbond, she may be better off than she'd be with nothing. Faint bonds give some sensory strength on both ends, according to the Guardians.

It has to be better than being alone. He's only faced the prospect of being alone without actually doing it, and he's grateful for that.

 _So am I,_ Krayt sends him.

"Just how big is your transport, anyway?" the Twi'lek asks.

"Depends how big I need it to be." Luke has been working on looking inscrutable. He's not sure he's any good at it yet. Krayt ignores him and goes back to talking with the cubs.

The Twi'lek looks him over. "Just you keep them out of trouble."

"Of course."

A detachment of stormtroopers show up before the _Falcon_ does. They're checking dwellings and ships for "contraband," or at least that's what the scuttlebutt in the market is.

Luke's ship is parked in the spaceport, since the other option was melting a chunk of desert. Shipglass gets covered in the dunes or broken down again soon enough, its edges smoothed out and worn away by sandstorms, but when it's fresh or uncovered it's no good for beasts or people. There are enough smugglers in the deserts who don't care what damage they do that he won't add to the dangers if he can help it.

With seven wolves, Rex, and Luke stuffed in a space built for two sentients and his lightsaber hidden in the toolbox while he checks the wiring on the hyperdrive, he's starting to think he made the wrong choice.

The Twi'lek disappeared like the end of a sandstorm. No one can pin anything on her.

"This squad looks like shinies," Rex says as he keeps a lookout. "Give them a little push in the Force and they'll wander away."

"Is that how they used to do it?" Luke asks. "No finesse? Just grab people's minds and shove them around?"

"Wait till you hear the tally of how many ships the general went through," Rex says, and then his tone changes. "Good afternoon," he says crisply. "How can I help you?"

The lead trooper says, "We're searching for contraband biologicals from offworld," in a helmet-modulated voice. "Open your ship for Imperial inspection."

Luke streaks his face with goo from the hyperdrive to confuse any ident scans they have going, then puts on the dopiest grin he can. "Aw, we don't have much." He lets his hair flop when he pulls his head out of the compartment and sends a warning to Rex via Krayt and Vod. "Just a tiny, tiny bit of spice, like anybody does on their honeymoon, right, sweetheart?"

Rex gives him a pretty good dopey grin back for having only a wolf warning and pats his ass. "Nothing to warrant an Imperial inspection."

"And if you're going in there I'd better clean up." Luke makes a show of maneuvering out of his grasp while also taking his hand and letting the clasp of their fingers linger. "Every stitch of clothing I own is on the floor somewhere. And it's all filthy." He pulls Rex in again, and he comes, loose-limbed as if they really do know each other this way. "You monster."

"It's your fault," Rex says fondly. Luke wonders who he's thinking of.

The trooper clears his throat. "A little spice?"

"Almost gone." Luke can't make himself blush, but he can laugh and hide his face in Rex's shoulder.

"If I'd known you were packing that many loincloths, I'd've bought more," Rex says, combing his fingers through Luke's hair.

 _Is that supposed to be suggestive?_ Luke asks Krayt.

_I don't know what his pack did for fun._

"All right, all right," the trooper says. "Leave them to it."

The squad moves off. After they're gone, Luke and Rex disentangle. Luke says, "Sorry about that."

Rex shrugs. "That trick is much easier with kids who don't recognize a clone on sight, and with troops so shiny they're blinded by their own armor and don't look at you. Didn't work on droids."

"Ah. Shiny. Got it." Luke doesn't wipe his face off. Someone else might happen by who has an interest in reporting an Imperial fugitive. "So that was a new trick?"

Rex laughs. "No. Didn't usually go for the flirting, though, more the grab-and-kiss, too busy to talk now, sorry, the wolves are getting into it."

He had to ask. The back of his neck is warm. "But, um. Vod's--"

"Nobody knows when a wolf's flirting seriously and when he's tugging on his dam's ears because wolfless guards are staring his brother down," Rex says easily. This is all the oldest news to him. Strategy and tactics, right.

Luke nods, pretending he's not embarrassed. "We have a lot to learn."

"Yeah, but that wasn't bad, and you didn't--" Rex waves his hand like Ben using the Force to push his thoughts into someone's head. "Tricking people lasts longer."

"Thanks."

Rex thumps his shoulder, all the heat from the acting gone. "I'll check on the little ones. Make sure we still have two seats in there so we can resell it."

They survive another patrol without having to do more than what Uncle Owen would call canoodling. They rendezvous with the _Falcon_ two hours after the Imperials leave, in a distant part of the spaceport. Switching their berth is a dusty, annoying job, but it's worth it when Luke cracks the seal on the little ship and the _Falcon_ 's right next to her.

 _Come on over,_ he sends to Han. _Bring Chewie and Amilyn and whoever else._

Rex and Vod are there, standing guard outside, watching. They walked from the other berth, two klicks away in the direction of civilization. Han gets out of the _Falcon_ and throws them a salute that Rex echoes.

 _Thought you were recruiting new blood, not old codgers,_ Han says.

 _It's been complicated._ One of the cubs whimpers and noses against Luke's ankle. _Are you nervous?_

_You have a bunch of wolf cubs and every last one of them means you can replace me, kid._

_Krayt, would you go get Han?_

She barrels out of the ship, glad to stretch her legs instead of riding herd on the cubs, and crashes into Han gleefully. He says, "Your Majesty!" and she tells him off as thoroughly as Leia ever does, up one side and down the other, explaining what a fool he's being by hanging back and that the others are only hanging back because he is, and because they know he's got every right as a pack member to be first up the three steps into the cockpit, which is overflowing with cubs who have heard all about him and want to meet him.

 _Me?_ Han asks. _Why?_

 _You're already ours._ Krayt huffs at him. _Go on or I'll tell Amilyn she can go in first. I told them about her, too, and about Chewbacca._

Han looks surprised and slightly hurt. "Of all the low-down things, your Maj," he says, but he heads for the open door.

It's taking two arms, a leg, and a lot of Force control to contain wriggling, enthusiastic cubs until he gets there. Once he breaches the door, they're all over him and he falls back in a pile of wolf puppies, all of them sniffing him, comparing his scentname to the one Krayt had given them and to his actual scent--from what Luke gathers from Krayt, he hit the 'fresher about three seconds before getting off the _Falcon_. "Hey, hey," Han says, laughing. "You're all very cute. Hi." One of them licks his nose and he makes a face. "Wow, hi, you're Coolant Leak, huh? And you're Catastrophic Motivator Failure? And you're--oh, kiddos, Cooked Meat and Burned Fur? That's a rough pair of names." He tousles their ears and they lip at him, but none of them seem to be bonding with him, only recognizing him as a pack member.

Krayt sends Luke a question. He sends back, _They're all a little old. I don't know._

Amilyn nods to Luke from the other side of Han and his pile of puppies. She's in a beige coverall for once, something that wouldn't stand out on any planet, and her violet hair is shrouded in a scarf. "Quite a find," she says.

Krayt sends Amilyn's scentname, two flowers and an X-wing cockpit, to the puppies.

Two of them break off from pestering Han and go to her, leaping up against her knees, looking into her face. One of them meets her eyes and she kneels beside him. He mouths her hand. "Hello," she says, sounding enchanted. "Mm, pure oxygen. I didn't know that had a smell, really, but hello." The wolf catches her hand in his mouth again. He's a bright-eyed pup, dark brown with black stripes, and he can't know that he's pulling her away from the flying she adores.

Luke would rather have her in the pack than flying. She has many other skills to give the Alliance, and she's had time to think about the shift required of a wolfsister.

Amilyn's smile is pure delight. _Yes, I do feel like I'm breathing differently,_ she sends, her internal voice calm.

 _Nicely done, and welcome,_ Luke says.

_Thank you. Oh, this is strange. Can we reach Leia?_

_At this range, not without the Force,_ is the simple answer. The longer answer is, "Not without the possibility of being overheard."

 _I see. Hello, all of you._ Amilyn turns to the other cubs, who swarm her.

"So," Han says in Luke's ear. "Guess I'm not good enough."

"There are only five of them." Luke puts his arm around Han. "You haven't met all the puppies in the galaxy yet. They're happy to be in your pack."

"Great. They see me as an equal. I feel so much better."

Krayt huffs at Han. _More people to help with these cubs is better. Maybe one of mine will like you. They'll be better behaved._

 _That wouldn't help much,_ Luke says mildly.

She ignores him regally and goes to corral one of the cubs who's wandering off.

It doesn't help Han's ego that Chewie bonds with Catastrophic Motivator Failure at first glance and makes pleased Wookiee noises at her. Maybe it helps a little bit that she's a bitch, and not a queen bitch, and that in the grand scheme of putting a pack together, if she'd taken to Han, it would have made things complicated.

It makes things a little complicated that she's sprawled across Chewie's lap while they're getting the _Falcon_ off the ground, but not very. Mostly, he's out of commission and so's Amilyn, but Rex and Luke are available to take over.

With all the wolves underfoot and the knock-out effect of bonding, it's just as well Han didn't try to bring enough people to find matches for all the cubs.

"You can't just call her Catastrophic Motivator Failure," Han tells Chewie, who's stroking her and looking intensely pleased with life.

He snorts and asks why not, possibly with three or four curses in there. The more Luke learns of Shyriiwook, like the Binary he's picking up from Artoo, the more swear words he learns.

"It's a terrible name."

 _In Basic, yes,_ Chewbacca sends. _I'd never call her that pile of nonsense._

 _What is it in Shyriiwook?_ Luke asks in the mode of communication where he's sure he can pronounce Shyriiwook.

Chewbacca clears his throat once, sharply.

Han bursts out laughing.

The puppy on Chewbacca's lap shifts and whimpers. He pets her until she goes back to sleep. He growls at her, ending with the same throat-clearing. _She's a truly excellent Catastrophic Motivator Failure,_ he sends, for the humans' benefit.

"She looks it," Han says wistfully.

 _Don't be a self-inverting naked monkey any harder than you can help, Solo-who-walks-surrounded. You're going to disappear up your own ass,_ Chewbacca sends, his claws infinitely delicate on Catastrophic Motivator Failure's feathery legs.

Luke wonders whether Chewbacca knows Luke can hear him and gets a wink for his troubles.

Han points at Chewbacca. _Buddy, you're sitting in my ship with your brand-new fuzzball best friend shedding on my co-pilot's chair. There are puppies all over the place drooling and probably peeing on important machinery and do I know where they are? Only sort of, because what packsense have I got? Second-hand at best. My girlfriend's girlfriend who's smarter than me and prettier than me and knows her better than me has a wolfbrother that's going to run away with her wolf queen the second they meet, I bet you credits to creampuffs. Luke will go too, because where Leia goes he goes, and they're going to run the galaxy without me and maybe every couple of cycles they'll send me a holo, "Having fun, lots of cute wolf puppies, glad you're not here." What have I got to offer against that?_

"Han," Luke says, hurt.

_Five wolves sniffed your pasty bald excuse for haunches and realized they knew a wolf who was better for you than them._

_Or that no wolf would ever want me._

_Listen to him!_ Chewbacca groans at Luke. _Did you ask Krayt, o ruddy-skinned king of self-pity who can't even grow a beard to hide his emotions let alone real fur, or did you just curl up in a corner and suck your own dick?_

 _Hey,_ Luke says. They both ignore him.

 _What would Krayt know?_ Han asks.

 _What mysterious knowledge lies locked in the minds of those who walk among you, furry and ignored?_ Chewbacca asks irritably. _O beautiful Krayt, most precious of queens, what was it those puppies were saying about Han when they passed him over for me?_

 _Mm?_ Krayt asks, half-asleep. For a moment, Luke wonders whether Chewbacca is making the incident up. Then she says, _They said he'd be suited to their uncle._

"Where's their kriffing uncle?" Han asks, on his feet.

"I don't know!" Luke's standing too.

If it was possible to turn around in hyperspace, they'd do it.

It's not.

Han slams his hand on the control panel where it won't hit anything.

"We'll find him, or another wolf who suits you, when we have time, all right?" Luke says. Everything else is so much more pressing, except for the way Han's frustration is in his throat and behind his eyes, feeling like his own. "When the fighting's over."

"Yeah," Han says, as if he doesn't care.

"If there's one, there's more than one." Luke covers Han's hand.

Han squeezes his fingers after a few seconds.

 _You'll be fine,_ Chewbacca says. _If the Jedi puppies run away with Amilyn to rule the galaxy, Catastrophic Motivator Failure and I will adopt you into our pack._

"Thanks, buddy," Han says. "That'll keep me warm at night."

_We have more than enough fur for three._

"Yeah, you do."


	7. Chapter 7

Arala is heavily pregnant by the time Leia can return to the Alliance, leaving Chandrila to have its first proper, planet-wide election of a representative government three weeks after her departure. They roll into the current base on Sullust, Arala placing her feet with care on the beautiful pavement. It's nowhere Leia would've chosen for a pregnant wolf, but it's where the pack is, and where Krayt has built a den. She's not going to argue the point.

Han meets them with Luke, who looks harried and also oddly glowing, like he's got some overflow hormones. Nobody has dared to say anything of the sort to Leia and she doesn't have a clue whether she looks any different than normal. She can't tell from the way Han smiles at her. "Your Highnessness," he says, and bows, like the pain in the ass he sometimes tries to be.

All she wants is to bed down with both of them and feel like somewhere could possibly be home for a little while without fighting for it. As soon as he's standing up, she says, "Han," no titles, no arguing, no nothing, and hugs him.

 _I'm sorry I don't have a wolf yet,_ he sends her, tight and quiet. _Amilyn's in with the command council, since she's out of her snubfighter._

_Okay. When was your last sleep cycle?_

He's still frowning over that one when Luke hugs them both, not waiting for her to let go. "Missed you," he says. "Krayt's asleep. Want to join her?"

"So much."

They've been allotted different quarters this time, not just the three people-plus-wolves, but three bedrooms, plus a lot of wolf beds, for the cubs that are already there and the ones who are on their way. Han catches Leia's curious look. "They asked what we wanted and gave us something close to it. This is ours--" he turns into the first bedroom. It's a utilitarian space: white walls, plain bed, only the most basic things laid out to let her know which side of the bed Luke's been using and which side is Han's, and where they've decided she should have a table of her own. Off to the side of the bed, there's a cupboard, low and wide, that will serve as a den. "Amilyn's in the next one down, sharing with Nien Nunb, who's Sullustan and bonded with Coolant Leak, and then Rex and Chewie. Next down the hall are Cooked Meat and Burned Fur and their sibs. You're going to need a lot of hands for the cubs."

It takes Leia a moment to match up the scentnames with the wolves' usenames as she kicks off her shoes. It's strange to know that she can touch all these people's minds, now that they're physically close to each other, when she doesn't know them. Their presence in the packsense is distant--they've bonded with Krayt, not Arala, not yet.

Arala has other things on her mind.

"We need everyone we can get," she says, her arm around Han's waist. Luke has written to her about Han edging away from the pack while still being right in the middle of it, and she couldn't imagine what that looked like, but now she can see it.

Arala goes into the cupboard den and wakes Krayt enough to greet her. It's moments before they're curled up together, radiating contentment.

"All the new packmembers have their own cubs to work with," Leia says. "The only experts we have who won't be overwhelmed are you and Rex."

Han snorts. "I'm no expert."

"You've been working with Rex, right?"

"When I can."

Leia frowns at him. "Do you want me to yell at you?"

"No," Luke says, and yawns. "I don't want anyone to yell at anyone. I want to get some real sleep with both of you here where I can feel you and then maybe when we're all rested and not so crabby we can have sex."

"Very romantic." Han kisses his cheek.

"Oh, please. You haven't been on Chandrila for months with a sulky wolf," Leia says.

Han sniffs. "You could crook your finger at anybody and have them at your feet."

Leia lets her head fall back into a pillow that smells like the people she wants to be with, Krayt, and maybe wolf puppies who are in her pack. "Maybe I could have. I wasn't interested in just anybody."

"Only the best for you?" Han takes one of her feet in his hands, firm and confident as ever.

"Mmhm," she agrees. "My standards are sky-high."

"I bet they are," Luke says, and takes her hand, working out some of the stress in her palm. "The galaxy's finest people, and even still you turn so many away."

Leia wrinkles her nose at him. "Very nearly all of them."

"Very nearly?" Han asks, indignant. He digs his thumbs in harder and she gasps. "What kind of decadent orgies have you been throwing on Chandrila without us?"

"I turned away every flirt on Chandrila." Leia bites her lip. "All I wanted was this stick-jockey Rebel I met once, I can't think where--oh, do that again, Han."

Luke laughs and lets her hand go. "Well, if that's all you wanted."

Leia grabs his collar with the Force and pulls him into a kiss. "Don't be silly. It's hard to talk when he's getting my frustration with three provinces worth of Chandrilans out using only his knuckles, that's all. I was going to say, a stick-jockey and a Jedi with a wolf. Any idea where I can find them?"

"I think they're around somewhere." Luke kisses her again.

"Only thing is, Amilyn's got a wolfbrother," Han says, his hands moving to her other foot. "O2 will be around as soon as she is. And Burned Fur's a boy, and so's Cooked Meat."

"And?"

"So you might change your ambitions, your Worship, that's all. I don't know which of them is most to Arala's taste."

"None of them, for the next few months especially, while she's busy with cubs too young to do things like see and walk." Leia's voice is sharp enough to cut.

"After that, though," Han says. "After that, she'll have all the opinions. Queens do."

Leia runs her fingers through Luke's hair. "Is Krayt playing favorites?"

"She only wants someone to sleep against all the time now. Anyone who's willing to keep her company is her favorite. Anyone who dares to get up before she's ready is her least favorite." Luke shrugs and gets up to take off his uniform. "The cubs are cubs."

"And Vod's a canny old bastard. I wouldn't put anything past him."

"Vod's a smart wolf who likes warm spots almost as much as Krayt does, and you're paranoid." Luke tousles Han's hair. "I didn't make sure you had this shift free so you could worry through it." He sends Leia, _I thought it'd help him, knowing there was a wolf somewhere for him._

 _He's a romantic, but not that kind of romantic._ "Oh, you're on break on my account?" Leia asks, trying to keep herself out of Arala's dreams. "How full are the other rooms?"

Han tilts his head, listening to the packsense. It's a mannerism Leia hasn't seen anyone use in too long, that looks and feels like home. She's missed it, and him, all of them, even the ones she hasn't met yet. "There's decent soundproofing, and they knew you were coming home. Nobody's in right now."

"Then I want you." She beckons him and he comes readily, kneeling over her and kissing her so hungrily she sends Luke, _What have you been doing while I've been away?_

His answer is a string of warm friction, kisses, hands, mouths, fucking, that reassures her. She hadn't asked them to wait for her, and they didn't. It's easy to relax into it and unfasten Han's shirt, to put her hand over his heart and measure his heartbeat as she kisses him. "Missed you," Luke says, his hands at her waist and his mouth on her ear. He nuzzles her and she loses her breath.

 _Two minutes ago you wanted to sleep,_ she sends them both. _Now you want your mouth full?_

 _Your Highness, may I present Luke Skywalker,_ Han says, his hands in her hair, his teeth teasing her lower lip. _Luke, this is her royal highness Princess Leia Organa, late of Alderaan. If you want to go down on her, you have to ask very, very politely._

 _We've met, thanks, and no, you don't,_ Luke says. He has Leia's trousers around her knees. _All you have to do is say, Leia, may I?_

 _Well, Leia, may I?_ Han asks immediately.

She laughs. "Sure, Han."

"Hey!" Luke looks disappointed and Leia laughs at him again.

"Oh, come here and let me hold you. I'm not going to fall asleep after one."

She ate well on Chandrila, far better than she has with the Rebel Alliance. She danced as she hasn't in cycles. She was courted in ways no one in this bed has dreamed of bothering with. None of the meals, none of the soirées, none of the teasing and gifts were anything like as lovely as holding Luke and having Han's mouth on her, both of their voices as close in her head as they've ever been, sharing all her pleasure and echoing back everything she's making them feel just by being with them. She comes twice, once with Han's tongue fast against her, once with his fingers inside her.

He asks, aloud, "Can I," and she pulls him down and sits on him as an answer. He barely lasts three breaths and then he's pulling a pillow over his red face and apologizing.

Leia tugs on the pillow, but Han won't let it go. "We gave you too much."

"I'm not a kid. I should've--"

Luke pokes him in the side. "Everybody's having fun. Right?"

"I am." Leia's not sure she's done yet, but even if Luke was, there are other options in the drawers, not just Han and his embarrassment problem. "Well. I'm not sure Luke's having as much fun as he wants to."

"Soon," he says mildly.

Han takes the opportunity to throw the pillow at him. He's still red. "I could go back to what I was doing before. Make it up to you."

"You didn't let me down." She kisses him to shut him up as much as to kiss him.

Luke nuzzles her ear again. "Leia, may I?"

"You're filthy, Skywalker." She takes his hand and nibbles his fingers.

"So are you," he says appreciatively.

It feels so good to laugh with them, and just as delicious to lie in Han's arms with Luke's mouth on her as the other way around. She's dizzy with the joy of it, with the pleasure of them, with the taste of herself and Han, because Luke is nothing if not generous. Han, wanting to prove he's enough, kisses her until she has to let him go to breathe, to touch anything that isn't his skin or Luke's, until she has to whisper in his ear that Luke's neglecting himself and the best thing Han can do is look after him.

Perhaps Luke hasn't so much been neglecting himself as teasing himself in ways Han hasn't been paying attention to. Perhaps it takes little more than a hand on his erection and a "Hey, kid," to set him off. Perhaps it's a balm for Han's wounded ego, and doesn't hurt Luke in the least, because he's laughing in Han's arms and he knows exactly how close he was to the edge.

She feels as big as the world between them after months of feeling smaller than she's used to, and it's glorious.

The 'fresher is less glorious, though it is at least part of their quarters, and she can't complain about that, exactly. Leia staggers back from it in a robe, hoping she doesn't meet any of the new-to-her packmembers while she's obviously post-coital. It'd be bad enough to run into Amilyn or Chewbacca while she probably has bitemarks on her shoulders or something, and while she's definitely low on energy and high on smiling.

She makes it back to bed without embarrassing herself.

The morning is a different story. Coolant, Burned Fur and Cooked Meat's wolfsiblings are at their work shifts before breakfast, but she meets Rex over breakfast and he looks at her, then looks again. "You are very like your mother, Madame Organa," he says, and salutes her in the busy mess hall. Every table is slightly different, and the ceilings are ornate, but she only has eyes for him and the history he represents.

"You don't need to call me that. Or salute. Or anything, honestly." She nods to him. "Please, call me Leia. And you are Rex, yes?"

"Yes. My brother, Vod." She's already talked about the elbow-relation Vod has with the packsense. She can't identify his scentname any more than Luke could, but she acknowledges it gravely.

"It's good to meet you both." She presses her lips together and makes herself smile. "I didn't know you knew Breha Organa."

Rex's eyebrows go up. "Senator Bail Organa, yes, a long time ago. He's very brave."

"Yes, my father was."

"Ah. Yes." Rex clears his throat and settles into the way of things with a better grace than Master Yoda had. "It was an honor to know him. You must miss him, and your lady mother, both."

"Indeed. And you? Where have you been in the years since the wars, Rex?"

"Since I served with the General, and met Senator Organa, and Senator Amidala?" He says it lightly enough that anyone walking by might not note it. Her heart aches and she wants all of his stories, illustrated by R2-D2, immediately. Between the two of them and with whatever notes Obi-Wan might deign to share, they might fill in some biographical data on the late Senator Amidala. "I've been here and there. Done some work for the Alliance, over the years. Heard your name around, your--Leia. Your parents would be proud of you."

The words make her shiver, coming from Rex, in a way they haven't in some time. "Don't, please," she says and sends. If he knows how rare the "please" is, he gives no sign.

"I can't do anything but tell you the truth."

"That's not even close to true."

"Leia!" Amilyn says. A wolf cub bounds into Leia's knees, bursting the illusion of privacy.

"You're here," she says, as if Amilyn would be anywhere other than with her pack. She accepts a hug and twirls with it, with the sweet scent of Amilyn's joy and her black puppy, barking at Leia's knees.

"You're here!" Amilyn says. "Meet my Oxygen. Oxygen, darling, this is Arala's sister."

Oxygen sits and listens like a proper wolfcub. His scentname is a breath of air, literally, after the chemicals and confusion of some of the others. Leia beams at him. "Thank you, Oxygen."

 _It's good that you're here,_ Oxygen sends, one thought tumbling over the next. _Amilyn says you were gone too long. You've been gone longer than I've been here, which is obviously too long. Krayt missed Arala too._

_I know. But I'm here now._

_It's good you're here!_ Oxygen sends. He bounces up and dances around her.

 _It's so good you're here,_ Amilyn sends warmly.

It's strange to be in a place she's never been before and have it feel like home, but it does. _I missed you all terribly._

 _You don't know half of us,_ Amilyn chides her.

 _I missed the potential of Oxygen. The potential of all of them, when I was dealing with Chandrila and with--_ she sends Vader's scentname with a visual, which she's never been able to do with Amilyn before. It feels like a relief.

Amilyn shudders beside her. _Why couldn't Luke manage him--no, I know._ She sends an image of Luke playing with the cubs, as sweetly guileless as the wolves.

_He's better than that._

_When it comes to politics? I know you love him, but no._

_He could learn if he had to._

_Lucky him that he has you to protect him._

That, Leia can accept without any argument. _Yes._

Han says, "Good morning," and if he still thinks she'll choose Amilyn over him for want of a "whom" or a wolf, it doesn't show in his demeanor. He hands them both caf and he and Amilyn bring Leia up to speed on the latest intelligence reports that are general knowledge in-system but not for reporting as far as Chandrila.

Luke comes slumping in with Chewbacca and a giant tray of food a bit later. Chewbacca speaks much less Shyriiwook than he did before Leia left, but he's rarely quiet in mindspeech. _If you romp all night, you have to eat, puppy, or all your hair will fall out and your head will be as bald as your poor cold ass._

 _I ate plenty,_ Luke sends with a smirk.

Chewbacca roars at him, a full-throated noise that draws everyone's attention before it turns into laughter, and aims a lazy paw at him. _Insolent, filthy, wretched puppy, if you had any fur long enough to be worthwhile you'd never keep it clean,_ he sends, chortling. Luke deflects him with the Force without raising a hand, laughing.

The entire Alliance, at least the part of it quartered on Sullust and awake at this hour, is watching. This is their Jedi, their wolfpack, their Wookiee warrior. Half of Leia wants to call them out for inappropriate conduct.

Half of her wants to nudge them and join in, because it's not like anyone but the packmembers heard the joke, and almost no one knows the extent of it.

Rex catches her eye and jerks his chin toward the chaos.

Leia shrugs. She tells Arala, _Tell Vod to tell his brother that if he doesn't care to join the pack, our affairs are none of his business._

Vod coughs under his table.

She doesn't need his commentary to know she's lying, but she's certainly not going to explain herself to a stranger in the mess hall, least of all one who knew her father. Leia has borne up under many stresses in her time, but she hasn't had to justify her love life in full in the face of Bail Organa's memory yet.

The thought turns her stomach. She puts a ration bar in her pocket for later and makes her excuses, leaving Arala with Krayt and Luke and heading to the command center, where she doesn't have to smell food.

Once she's there, the flow of information sustains her better than any food can. She shares what she's been doing on Chandrila in more detail than she was able to put in her reports and absorbs everything there is to know about the Sullust base and the troop movements this cell knows about. It's shift change before she realizes she should have eaten something, and Amilyn comes over to her where she's sitting with the records.

"Did you have a productive day?" she asks, Oxygen at her feet.

"Yes. How about the two of you?"

"It's harder, with the number of breaks we have to take." Amilyn reaches down to soothe Oxygen without seeming to think about it. She smiles. "I suppose it was easier for you when you were training."

"Not at all." Leia stands and stretches her legs. "The person doing our training despised wolves. Absolutely couldn't stand them. If he could have had the two of us without wolves, we'd still be there, probably. As it was, he begrudged every break they needed."

Amilyn frowned. "But they make it easier to use the Force."

"The packsense is not the Force, though, and traditional Jedi didn't have wolves." Leia stretches her senses toward Arala, who comes towards them slowly, with a deceptively large amount of momentum. _Hello, beautiful._

 _I'm not leaving the den tomorrow,_ Arala says, burying her face in Leia's hands. _Bring me food and water, bring whatever you want to read, anything, but I'm not leaving it except to void._

 _You don't have to._ Leia strokes her side gently. Under her fur, her skin feels hot and taut. _Do you want us to move the den onto the_ Falcon _so everything smells more familiar?_

 _It smells like Krayt. It's good._ Arala sighs gustily. _I want to go home._

_Where's home, love?_

Arala sends a cascade of images and scents. All of them involve Krayt. Some of them are on bases that the Empire has melted to slag; some are on bases they abandoned; a few are hidey-holes on Dagobah; the worst is a den with other cubs in it that must be where they lived when they were small. _Home._

Leia doesn't answer with her own flood of irretrievable places because she's not at the mercy of her hormones like Arala is and one of them has to keep her head. _I know it's been hard. I'm sorry. We can go back to our quarters and find Krayt._

Arala groans aloud and turns that way. Leia gives Amilyn a rueful look. "Where she leads, I follow fast behind," she says, quoting one of the Guardians' poems about wolves.

"Of course," Amilyn says. Oxygen does a pattering dance around Arala that she ignores with the dignity of a capital ship cruising forward, taking no note of the snubfighter jinking and bouncing across her viewscreens. "We're with you."

Oxygen's constant circuits prove to be useful in warning other people that Arala is on the move. People generally make way for the wolves, but not to such an extent. Leia wonders how touchy Krayt has been that they've got automatic right of way in every corridor, people not only yielding but pausing and throwing Arala a quick salute and a, "Your Maj."

Han has a lot to answer for. When Leia's hips don't hurt and her belly doesn't ache and her sides are less--

That's Arala's discomfort, Leia realizes after a corridor that goes on three times longer than it should. She asks, "Can you talk to me?"

Amilyn asks, "About what?"

She's not used to having a wolfbrother yet, and she hasn't dealt with the way wolves can drag their partners into feedback loops when they're in a crisis. Leia bites her lip hard and tries to walk on two feet that work instead of four increasingly sluggish ones. "Anything."

Amilyn's voice comes from a long way away, down a malfunctioning commlink. "Getting food supplies laid in here has been complicated. The agriculture operations don't create a surplus at the best of times, and they're carefully tailored for Sullustans. You're awfully pale."

Luke sends, _Leia?_

_I'm fine._

Someone touches Leia's front leg. Her arm. She has an arm, and she's in Amilyn's arms, leaning on her and against the wall. "Hi."

"There's a medic on the way," Amilyn says, her beautiful face creased in a frown.

"It's not me, it's Arala," Leia says. "Tell whoever to tell them to bring a float. She needs Krayt. Krayt needs her too."

"I got that part." Amilyn sighs. "Will you smother me in my sleep if I pick you up?"

Leia has two legs now, and two arms. Arala is on a float, floating, not trying to walk. Things are much simpler. "Yes. I'm fine."

"You weren't fine."

Leia shakes her head. "I'm fine now." She proves it by walking without a hand on the wall for balance or a hand on Amilyn. The floor is steady under both her feet now that there are only two of them, not a number somewhere between two and six at any given moment. "Please take Arala to our quarters," she tells the medic with the float.

"It's going to be messy," the medic says.

"Life generally is."


	8. Chapter 8

There are more cubs in the world than anything else. There are more cubs than there are stars, more cubs than fingers, more cubs than toes, more cubs than places to put them or places to sleep or things to eat. Luke vaguely knows some of that math is off but they move and shift when he's not looking even though they're tiny and blind and wriggly, so it's hard to keep track, and they're indiscriminate. This black one is Krayt's and that black one is Arala's, this gray is Arala's and that's Krayt's, except now there are two black ones snuggled up to Krayt and two grays tight against Arala and Leia's asleep so she can't help him count to whatever number he's trying to count to.

"Eight," Han says helpfully. "All together. Have some water, kid."

"Thanks." Luke washes his hands and has a drink. He's going to be covered in the stuff that comes out of tiny cubs for a while, he knows that from the Guardians' writing about dealing with wolves. Hopefully the Empire won't find them until. They're deep underground on Sullust, denned up nice and tight like smart wolves.

Krayt huffs and sends, _Sleep while they're sleeping._

It doesn't have the weight of a Jedi command but it's good advice. The problem is, his clothes are wrecked, and if he sleeps in them, he may not get out of them with anything shy of a lightsaber. Leia's got the same problem, but she's already unconscious and he's not going to wake her for anything shy of a direct attack.

Luke tries to find a piece of his shirt that's a little less disgusting than the rest to wipe his hands on and fails. He gives up and levers himself out of the makeshift den with the Force.

 _Not bad,_ Han sends. He hands Luke a towel. _Hang on a sec._ He goes into the hall and comes back. _You've got a clear shot._

 _Thanks._ The 'fresher hasn't felt so good in ages. It's going to be like this a lot, he's sure, because as soon as he's clean, he's going back to the den of wolf secretions and he's not going to worry about it very hard. Wolf cubs are like human infants: they're not ready to face the world on their own yet, and their mothers have a lot of work to do, keeping them warm and safe until they're ready to take their first steps.

After the 'fresher, Luke feels sanitary enough to hug Han, who's wearing clean clothes and putting up with the smell much better than he could be. "Hi," he says quietly.

"Hi yourself."

"I'm going to fall asleep on Krayt like the cubs."

"Okay." Han pats his hair. "Want to eat something first?"

"Nah. You want me to go get soap or a cleaning droid or something?"

"You make sure Krayt's not going to wake up unhappy. I can get help from anybody." Han kisses his temple. "When are you going to tell the rest of the Alliance about the cubs?"

"What? Oh, you can." Luke shrugs. "You were here for the whole thing, you're part of the pack, you know how many there are."

"I don't know how many of them are boys and girls. I don't know anything." Han stares at him.

Luke yawns. "We can figure it out tomorrow and tell them tomorrow. Nobody's going to care."

"Buddy, everybody's going to care. The Alliance just had eight babies. Everyone's going to want to know."

Luke closes his eyes a second and checks the packsense. All the cubs are asleep. "If I touch any of them, their moms are going to wake up and no one's going to be happy."

"I know, I know. Tomorrow."

"Like I said." He swallows another yawn. "Tomorrow."

"Go to sleep already." Han tousles his hair.

Luke wakes up in the dark with a wolf cub kicking him erratically in the side. He pats the cub gently and it kicks again, harder. _Calm down, little one._

It sends, _Hungry,_ more a feeling than a word. _Where is the milk?_

_You'd have to wake your mother for that._

_Mother._ The word tastes like milk, not like any milk Luke's ever had, precisely. Wolf's milk is not so very different from what comes out of wolf cubs.

 _She probably just got to sleep,_ but that's too human a sentence for a tiny wolf.

 _Mother!_ and it squeaks, too, yipping at the top of its small lungs.

"Oh, don't," Luke says, far too late.

Arala rolls over and nudges it with her muzzle. _What do you need?_

_Mother?_

She sniffs the cub. Sniffs it again. _Come here, little one._ That isn't precisely a yes, but it doesn't argue.

Leia asks, "What's the matter?"

Luke says, "Puppies. Nothing. Go back to sleep."

"Mm." She touches his wrist. "I'm going to get up. Ugh. Use the 'fresher. Somehow."

It sounds like a complicated process for whatever time of day it is. Now that the cub is sleeping and Arala is settling back down, Luke's yawning. "Okay."

Leia pats his hand. "Don't let the cubs eat you."

"They can't yet."

She curls up with him again a while later--he has no idea how long it's been--and then there are cubs awake and it's impossible to sleep.

They are everywhere. Han may think there are eight of them but he only has normal human senses and packsense to work with. With the assistance of a handlight, the Force, sleep deprivation, a camera, and a notebook, and Leia's eye for patterns, they decide there are definitely twelve cubs.

Then they take a survey and the number of males and females won't line up any time they try to compare coloration and bottoms. Krayt and Arala think the whole thing is incredibly funny and refuse to offer help. _You must know how many there are and whose are whose,_ Leia accuses them after the third page of crossed-out data.

 _We know how many there are,_ Krayt agrees amiably.

 _We know which ones are dog-wolves and which ones are bitches,_ Arala says firmly.

 _They were all born within two hours of each other and they've been in here ever since._ Krayt's less cheerful about that, but not by much.

 _If we were with the wolves from that day, now, we could tell you which one fathered which cub._ Arala's still clear.

 _They're ours._ That's together and very sure, with a strength that might come from smugness and might come from having a larger pack.

"Should we have done this differently?" Leia asks the air. She can't be asking Luke, since she knows he doesn't know.

 _No!_ from the wolves, in chorus.

Arala sends, _It's easier this way. If one cub wakes, we don't both need to tend it._

"Okay," Luke says. "Then we'll all pile in together and keep going."

Leia tenses all over and says, "Not now, not now," softly.

Luke offers her his hand, palm up, feeling useless. She takes it in the dark and squeezes hard for long moments as she has whatever communication she's willing to have with Vader. They've been dealing with politics while Luke's been handling the wolves and their complications, the growing pack, and the puppies.

With his free hand, he strokes Krayt. _How many cubs are there?_

 _Eight,_ she admits, now that Leia's busy and tense and it's not a game. _Half dog-wolves, half bitches._

_Thank you. How many are yours?_

There is a moment of quiet. He doesn't yell at her for checking with Arala, but she has to know this as well as the other answer. _They're all ours,_ just as firmly as before, from both of them at once.

Leia tightens her grasp. Luke sighs and puts his arms around her, but doesn't send her comfort that would be meaningless. _And that's all you'll tell us?_

_Yes._

_All right, all right._ Maybe they can get rid of the sheets that claim there are twelve cubs, or blame sleep deprivation and other concerns.

Leia swears aloud and buries her face in his shoulder. "When this is over, I'm never speaking to either of you again."

"Okay." Luke kisses her hair.

"I mean it." Leia sighs.

The eight tiny bodies between Krayt and Arala, none of which seem to know who their mother is or care particularly as long as they have warm bodies looking after them, don't put up a fight any more than Luke does. One of them cheeps and Arala nuzzles it. Another makes an indistinct noise, and Krayt takes care of it.

"What did he need?"

"It was a friendly call." Her voice is sharp. "Congratulations on the elections on Chandrila, and the Emperor won't be deploying any troops in retribution there. Congratulations on the cubs, and he'll be keeping his distance because there's nothing cubs gravitate to more than someone who's lost a wolf and he wouldn't do that to another living soul." She makes these considerations sound like a lack of wits and decency. "And did we or didn't we send someone to the moon of Endor, which I thought we did."

"We did, but there was nothing there. Why?"

"Apparently we have idiots for scouts and need to send someone else, possibly our 'partner,' and I swear if I have to hear him say that one more time in that condescending--" she sticks her face in Luke's shoulder again. "No, I'm fine. I'm just looking forward to explaining our living situation in full detail and then dropping him in a black hole while he's still appalled."

It's easy to let her comments about leaving slide off his back because he doesn't believe them, and simple not to let the ones about killing Vader bother him because he knows exactly why she would. She has, after all, explained herself over and over again.

Life with wolves has meant sharing far more about certain aspects of his life with more people than Luke ever expected to, while some truths are buried so deep he doesn't think about them.

"You think we're that appalling?" he asks, rubbing her shoulders.

"He was too young to be in a war. He was in love, and he wanted everything to be perfect." She sounds wistful and muffled and pained, all at once. "And he's--" she presses her face against Luke, harder. "Sometimes I look at Han and I think, 'He's solid. I can trust him.'"

"Yeah, so do I."

Something lets go in Leia's shoulders. "I don't know what anybody was thinking when they gave him--anything. He's powerful, but he's about as solid as a nebula." She shrugs Luke's hands off. "A Jedi who wanted a wolf and a family. No wonder he ended up with a Death Star and--us."

Arala sends, _We have an excellent pack._

"We have a superlative pack, but it's got its quirks." Leia puts her hand on Arala's side.

Luke leans into her. "If one of the dog-cubs decides to reject all the rebels and all the Guardians, maybe we can introduce him to Vader." He sends the scentname instead of the name.

It's too dark in the den to see her face, but he doesn't have to see her to know she's pursing her lips at him. "Why."

"Think of poor, lonely Catastrophic Motivator Failure. Where else are we going to find her a partner?"

Leia tickles him and he barely avoids kicking any of the wolves. If she wasn't covering his mouth, he'd laugh loudly enough to wake up all the cubs and Han. As it is, she giggles for him, and that's good enough.


	9. Chapter 9

There's no way of ordering cubs to choose exactly the right members of the Rebel Alliance as their partners, only hoping and nudging and weeks of _Yes, we've told them, not Han. Yes, we'll tell them again. They don't really understand why, but they're listening._

No one gets near the cubs without passing a test on the Guardians' materials about wolves and enduring long conversations with at least three of the current wolfsiblings about why they wish they'd never been chosen by a wolf.

There are plenty of pieces of the Guardians' writing that say the sexual part isn't strictly required. According to the traditional texts, it's just, variously, easier on the wolfsibling if the other sibling or siblings are compatible, generally recommended, good for the pack, good for the wolves, good for the cubs, good for the wolfsibling culture, highly prized, and on, and on, and on.

This isn't a Guardian temple or a Guardian pack, and they've cut it down to "If you want the details of what's traditional, turn to this section. Nothing described there will be mandatory in this pack."

One of the older litter's wolfsiblings' has decided she's not going to participate in any such thing. As a Twi'lek, she's dealt with entirely too many people who have only seen her people subjugated and make assumptions about her place in the world. Toli does what she wants, when she wants, with the people she wants. The wolfbrother in her life won't change that. As far as Leia knows, Toli doesn't want anybody in the Alliance, and anyone who tries to change her mind isn't welcome there.

By the time the prospective packmembers meet with Luke or Leia they don't have much to say about the sexual aspect other than, "It must be tiring," generally without eye contact.

At least, that's the way they treat her. Luke gets a few more prurient questions, most of which he laughs off by saying he was in a daze at the time and they'd have to ask someone who remembers. He doesn't, to her knowledge, volunteer that Han was there. She's sure of that, because Han doesn't threaten to leave the Alliance or the pack at any point in the process, even silently.

The pack's living quarters shift around as the cubs move in with their siblings, one by one. Lando, back from Tatooine because he's pack and this time, there's time to fetch him, laughs at his queenwolf's scentname when she gives it to him, because it's sun twice over and sand with a hint of desert plants, a name made Luke bury his face in his hands. _Oh, beautiful, I'm sorry,_ Lando sends to the whole pack. _I have to find you a new name._

 _You may,_ she says, and licks his hand.

The older wolves laugh. The people cheer them on.

Han goes a little shaky and sends Leia, _The thing with Arala and Krayt at the same time was a special occasion, right?_

_According to the Guardians, yes, that was unique._

_Good. If you two and Lando and Chewie and who knows who else all kicked off at the same time, I'd leave the system. Sorry._

She's kept her composure through all kinds of things. She keeps her outward composure through that mental image, too. _You might survive, that way. Prudent._

_But it won't happen._

_No. And it wouldn't end well if it did._ Arala's failure to fight with Krayt over males and den space and cubs had been a matter of wonder for the Guardians. They're keeping careful notes.

So are Leia and Luke. Some of the notes are entirely honest and time-stamped to be revealed well after they're deceased, because whatever effects genetics have on wolfbonds can be safely left in the hands of future Guardians.

 _It'll be quieter with the cubs gone,_ Han says a little wistfully.

 _We're going to find you a wolf._ Leia hasn't wavered from that promise, even though it's not one she knows she can keep.

Han looks away from her. _What the hell do we need with another wolf, your Highness? Aw, look, Blacktoes likes Sopoin._

Blacktoes's scentname is Dagobah Bog Farts, because at least one of the queenwolves is sure she's funny. Sopoin, a dark-skinned mechanic whose planet of origin escapes Leia, doesn't look like he knows what to do about the wolfcub looking up at him with melting eyes.

"You don't have to say yes," Luke says, as they have all said, time and again, about wolfbonds. "You can say, 'Thank you, but no,' and leave. It's your choice."

Blacktoes turns on his back, putting his chubby belly on display, and sends, _Please?_

Sopoin looks torn, like any right-thinking humanoid with eyes and a fuzzy belly mere centimeters away, begging for a good rub. "Um."

Leia averts her eyes and sends a suggestion that everybody else give them some space so Sopoin will only have to deal with the cub and his own conscience. _Blacktoes likes everyone._

 _So give him to Grandpa._ Han hasn't said it aloud or directly to the cubs. When he said it to Krayt, she proved exactly how protective a mother wolf in her den could be about cubs, and he learned not to send it to them either. But it's been his constant refrain every time the cubs get on his nerves: send them to Vader, let him deal with them. His mental image of this is of the cubs playing on Vader's lap, tripping him up, and tearing up his ships, happy as any set of rapidly-growing puppies let loose on someone who doesn't know how to handle them and isn't allowed to give them back instantly.

Leia's seen Vader's memories of Puk's litters, joyous and loving and lost, and she's sure that sending him Blacktoes would be as good as sending Vader into a black hole. Where she sees sweet, innocent lives full of promise, he sees the inevitability of betrayal and death.

She's only considered doing it a few times, when he woke her after far too little sleep for minor procedural matters and dumped his emotional garbage on her.

She's refrained because it would be cruel to whichever cub she shipped him. She can say she's going to stop talking to Luke forever as soon as this is all done, but she can't claim she'll stop talking to Arala; that would be an excellent way to test whether Arala would stop talking to her.

_He seems to have made his choice._

_Poor Sopoin. Maybe before the next litter, you could tell them scentnames can be nice scents too._

_At least they didn't name them all "Damp Fern."_ Leia has no idea how wolves measure the pleasantness of scents. She can't imagine that Burned Fur likes being Burned Fur.

Vod's scentname was no more pleasant and much harder to place. When she'd asked Rex about it, he'd said, "When they opened my batch, they named me CT-7567."

"What does that mean?" she asked.

"CT-7567 at your service, ma'am. And that's Fuel A53-952." Vod looked up at her, his tongue hanging out.

"Right. Of course. Yes."

"All his litter had names like that. This coolant, that fuel, the organic lubricant that kept the fountains in the Jedi Temple from seizing up that was made out of some nut or other, something that only powered skimmers from Naboo they used for high festival days." Rex's smile was crooked. "That's the problem with having a general with a mind like a workshop."

Leia had stared outright, then. "I'm sorry?"

Rex tapped his temple. "Smells like he's been up to his armpits in droids and engines his whole life, doesn't he?"

"Not anymore."

"Ah." Rex's smile faded. "I shouldn't be surprised."

Leia had thought of Luke's scentname, sunshine-grease-lightsaber, and felt her throat go tight. "Everyone changes in war, I suppose."

"Yes."

Blacktoes's highly specific name does not endear him enough to Sopoin, who leaves in tears, saying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," to everyone in the room. He takes Leia's hand and kisses it as if he's disappointing her personally.

"It's all right," she tells him, keeping back the stories of the more foolish mechanics who'd given up their calling for wolves. "Please, take the rest of the day off, and reread the Guardians' manual on this."

"Yes, of course, thank you, Princess Leia."

Leia smiles graciously at Sopoin. "Let us know if there is anything we can do to help."

She's dressed much more like a rebel, a Guardian, and a wolfsister than like a princess of Alderaan. The only thing she's kept is the length of her hair and the traditional braids, and even that has been a strain sometimes. The memory of her parents helping her with it and the present-day reality of Han and Luke both giving her a hand with increasing success makes it worthwhile. And she is tired, but that is part of being all of the things that she is.

 _So,_ Han sends.

 _Yes?_ Luke asks, after a moment, while Leia is still waiting for the end of his thought.

_Lando doesn't know what to do with cubs._

Leia waits a beat longer. _It'd be much more convenient for you to visit him than for him to come visit us. Whatever his girl's name is, she's his responsibility now._

 _That's what I was thinking, yeah,_ Han agrees. _If you're okay with it._

 _Don't do anything I wouldn't do,_ Luke says.

Han coughs out loud, doubling over, trying to hide a laugh. _If I can think of a single, solitary thing--_

 _Don't leave us,_ and that wasn't even supposed to be a conscious thought, let alone a shared one.

Han slings an arm over both their shoulders. _And go where? He brought you the credits from the Hutt. He's got a cub you could lose in a pocket. Chewie wouldn't go without Motivator, and Motivator's in love with Starblossom._

Starblossom is one of Blacktoes's littermates. They haven't exactly made Motivator's crush public, but she isn't subtle about it, and every rebel on Sullust knows Motivator belongs with Chewbacca. Starblossom hasn't found his sibling yet.

Two weeks later, Leia wonders whether Starblossom is waiting for them to say, "Yes, you can have Han, all right." but when she asks the cub, he sneezes at her.

_No! He's Krayt's/Arala's/yours/Luke's._

_Okay. Thank you._

She doesn't want to argue that he isn't. Or, she only wants to argue that he isn't a little bit, and not with a newly weaned cub that just might take her at her word.

She's definitely not going to tell a cub that Han's been sleeping with Lando as often as he hasn't, and that means something for people, even if wolves don't think anything of it.

It's none of Starflower's business that they reach one night where she's scheduled to spend it with Amilyn and Han's not there and Luke nudges her after dinner and sends, _I can sleep. It's not like I'm going to be alone._

 _There will only be four of you in the bed with all the cubs leaving. Are you sure?_ Leia pauses and assesses that. _You might be able to breathe. Now I'm jealous._

_What, is Oxygen getting big enough to crowd you?_

_All paws and knees, no manners._

_Put him on the floor._

She laughs in the space between them. _That always starts so well. You're all right?_

 _If I get lonely, I'll crawl in with someone else._ Luke winks. _The pack's big enough now._

She tries to remember if she's seen him flirting with anyone. He's spoken with Lando, of course, but other than that he doesn't play favorites, and no one's been trying to get him into bed. His time is spoken for, like hers is. _Just let me know in case I get a call._ Arala can always find Krayt, but in a midnight panic, it's easier not to have to ask a frightened wolf.

 _Always._ He sends her the feeling of a hug, as close and warm as ever, and she returns it.

In Amilyn's arms with Oxygen sleeping on the floor, curled up with Arala, Leia finds herself laughing at the thoughts scattered in her mind.

Amilyn grins at her. "Good things, I hope?'

"Mostly." Leia kisses her, lingering. "We have a very strange pack."

"Do we?" Amilyn traces the curve of her cheek. "What are normal packs like? I've read the Guardians' writings on the subject as much as I've had time for, but they don't seem to have a 'normal.'"

"You say, 'Oh, Leia is coming over tonight,' and Nien cheerfully finds somewhere else to sleep once a week. I say, 'Let me know where you're headed in case the voices in my head get loud,' and Luke promises to leave me a note. I'm contemplating sending one of our procurement agents back into the field with a barely-weaned cub before he manages to seduce the entire base and also Han, even more thoroughly than he already has. I don't know. What's odd about that?"

Amilyn raises her eyebrows. "Nothing, except that you're worried about Han. The moment the Empire falls, he's going to buy the three of you a darling little home on whatever planet becomes the new capital."

The prospect of the galaxy's future after the fall of the Empire is too vast to contemplate. On the rare occasion Leia thinks about it, she doesn't think about her personal life in it, as that is the smallest part of the puzzle and the one most likely to take care of itself. "That would be scandalous."

"Darling, once you introduce your man inside the Empire by his birth name, there's going to be enough scandal that mere sex will be boring." Amilyn strokes her shoulders. She knows all the secrets because someone needs to other than Han and the medical records, and Amilyn has held Leia's secrets since they were little girls. She knows things about Amilyn that they once considered appalling, when the Senate still met and Alderaan turned.

Everyone's standards have fallen, but Leia doesn't have any illusions about the public appetite for gossip. "Sex is never, ever boring."

Amilyn grins at her. "Not when you're involved."

"And twenty of my closest friends." Leia runs her fingers through Amilyn's hair. "Oxygen won't be mature enough when Arala's next heat hits."

"Soon." Amilyn kisses her softly. It feels like a promise that they'll all survive long enough for it to matter. "Soon." Leia shivers and buries her face in Amilyn's neck, breathing in the familiar scents of her skin and her arousal.

 _Are you busy?_ Luke sends.

"Hang on," Leia says. _What's up?_

 _There's a new recruit here and she says she knows you._ She can feel him smiling.

There are protocols for this sort of thing, none of which involve waking people up during their sleep cycle, which this technically is, unless the new recruit is traumatized or family. Leia frowns. _This had better be good news._

_I promise it's worth getting dressed for._

_Voyeur._ Leia sighs. "Our work is never done."

Amilyn groans. "I guess I should be grateful they didn't have to use the comm to get hold of you. What's the emergency?"

"A new recruit asking to speak to me. Luke won't tell me who it is." Leia pulls her clothes on and pins her hair up quickly, checking the braid with her fingers before she bothers with a mirror. It lies flat and tidy. It hasn't had a chance to do anything else.

"Helpful of him." Amilyn pulls on a fresh coverall. She's not wearing pilot's gear anymore, but the coveralls are too useful to let go. "Any guesses?"

"Someone who knows me, he said. Someone from Chandrila, maybe. He sounded happy about it. It can't be too big a deal or he'd have knocked on the real door." Leia tucks her feet into her shoes and opens the door for Arala, who's bouncing outside and at least as impatient as Luke.

 _Family,_ she says.

That gives Leia a little pause. The last time she got new family wasn't great. _Should we wake Han up for this one?_

Arala grins and goes to thump on the door to Lando's quarters. _Yes. The whole pack._

_Quite a welcoming committee for whoever it is._

It's the middle of the local sleep shift on Sullust by the time the whole pack assembles to Arala and Krayt's standards with the cubs turfed unceremoniously out of bed, their siblings looking variously bleary or awake depending on when they've been sleeping. The only person who looks excited instead of apprehensive is Rex. "What's up?" Leia asks him.

"Oh, you know how these things go," he says. "You send a message to a friend, they're busy, you're busy, it's cycles before you manage to find time to get together, and then all of a sudden you're both free."

Vod huffs a laugh. _We're not free,_ he sends Leia. _He knows it as much as I do. We're waiting for the big battle and for another heat here. And for our friend._

_Interesting. I thought this newcomer was my friend._

Vod ducks his head. _That too._

They're on their ship when Security clears them to meet with her. The hatch opens, and the first being out is R2-D2--definitely R2-D2, because if there's another astromech from pre-Imperial Naboo with that pattern of carbon scoring in the galaxy, it's got to have a different Force signature. "You're doing security sweeps now?" Leia asks.

Artoo acknowledges this and adds a flourish that means "safe" or "trusted." Luke sends Leia, _For friends, he says._

Leia sends back, _I'm tired of this game. Is she your friend too?_

_We've never met._

Leia sends him a glare and walks past Artoo, right to the bottom of the ship's ramp. "May I come aboard?"

"Yes," says a woman's voice. "You and our sister both. Bring your brother, too."

"What about me, Commander?" Rex calls behind Leia. Vod whines.

"Chain of command, soldier." There's a tease in her tone.

The ship is quite small and smells of wolf cubs. After the last few months, Leia would know that smell anywhere. There's a central corridor, a cockpit, a sleeping cabin, and little else. In the cockpit there is a white-cloaked woman in the pilot's chair and a black wolf in the co-pilot's seat. She stands when Leia enters--tall, thin, Togruta, smiling--and says, "It is so good to see you, Leia."

Leia's breath catches. "Oh. I thought--"

Luke, just behind her, asks, "Ahsoka Tano?"

Fulcrum--Ahsoka--holds her hands out to them. "Do you still hug people, Leia?"

"Yes. Please." For a moment, Leia feels like a little girl in Fulcrum's arms, bidding her welcome to Alderaan again, as if her parents will be there in a second to do the same. The scent of wolf is new, and newly familiar. Her heart aches. "I missed you."

"And I you." Ahsoka looks her over with the eye of someone who has assessed many trained soldiers. "You have done well for yourself, though you might have done better keeping away from the Jedi entirely."

Luke coughs, covering an objection or a laugh.

"What? Are you saying I'm wrong, Skywalker? Come here, let me have a look at you, too."

"Do you want to check my teeth?" he offers, presenting himself for inspection.

"If I'm going to join your pack I want to check much more than just your teeth." There's something sly in her smile that had never been there when she visited Alderaan.

Leia wants to get between them and say they shouldn't flirt, but it would be an awkward way to renew their acquaintance. Honest, but awkward nevertheless.

The wolf in the co-pilot's seat leaps to the floor and touches noses with Krayt, sharing scentnames. His is overripe fruit in the sun, and his usename is Terik.

He isn't submitting to her, not yet.

"We were told you lost your wolf," Leia says gently, making it not quite a question.

Ahsoka winces. "The first one, yes. Puk wounded everyone who could hear her when she went. I met Terik three cycles ago and he decided he could help me. Then he found a mate, and she decided she'd rather make a small pack with him than stay home." She glances toward the sleeping cabin. "That's why it smells like pups in here. They're coming up on old enough to bond, and I'm going to freeze in the shape of this seat if I sleep in it many more nights."

 _More cubs_ rings between Luke and Leia, both exciting and appalling at the same time.

 _They're not our pack yet,_ Luke says.

_If she wants to be, she will be, and I don't know what else she'd come here for after all these cycles._

"We can give you the coordinates for the Guardians," Leia says, keeping her voice neutral.

"Thanks, but I've been getting updates about a new pack from a friend. I think I might throw in with them. Upstarts. Renegades. Kids of an old friend of mine who was never afraid to throw out the rule book when things got too convoluted." Ahsoka doesn't manage to look guileless as she says this.

Luke puts his hand on Krayt's head for reassurance. "There are some drawbacks."

Ahsoka gives him a level look. "Good."

"Major ones," Leia says. "We'll brief you fully."

She smiles, showing her carnivore's teeth. "I like it when my intel's good."

"How much did Artoo give you, anyway?" Luke asks.

"As much as that data-dump ever gives anybody." Ahsoka shrugs. "What I asked for, maybe. More than Rex has been able to send me in bursts, definitely."

 _Rex?_ Leia asks Luke.

_They were packmates. Of course they'd have each other's backs, even now._

_I want her to stay but when we tell her he's in our pack-- with Vader's scentname --I'm afraid she'll be gone, and warn off everyone else who might join._

_That's up to her._ Aloud, Luke says, "We need to have a discussion somewhere unobserved and fully shielded. Arm yourself however you feel you need to, bring Terik, and we'll do the same."

"Artoo's coming, right?" Ahsoka asks. "And Rex. That way I know someone else will be on my side in a pinch."

There’s something profoundly dizzying about R2-D2's loyalties being so easily transferable, but Leia won't argue the point. "Yes, fine."

They hold the briefing in a small office with two conflicting bug-blocking systems running, which should be enough to confound anyone and anything trying to get a fix on them. Both Luke and Ahsoka ward the room in the Force, so it might light the place up for someone watching for mystical talents, but other eavesdroppers won't hear anything. They have a screen disconnected from the holonet, a table, chairs for the people who need chairs, wolf beds, and a recharging cradle for R2-D2 in case the meeting runs long. Rex and the pack know where they are. Beyond that, it’s a private meeting.

The cubs on Ahsoka's ship are left in the care of med droids for the time being, safely out of range of anyone they might bond with and locked out of reach of curious rebels in search of a promotion or prestige.

Leia and Luke tell their side of the story first, as it's shorter. They leave out the prurient parts--some things are easier to share after the fact, if it becomes necessary--and include, as they hadn't for nearly anyone, the existence of a nearly-silent, distant member of their pack.

Ahsoka looks bleak at Leia's explanation. She strokes Terik's fur and seems to be using some kind of Jedi meditation to push emotions aside, keeping herself from reacting too strongly or in the wrong way. "He interrupts your daily life and you allow it."

"He is a part of the Alliance in this way and I can’t argue his right to be so when he has done it honorably so far." Leia orders Luke to be quiet without so much as glancing at him. "If he betrays us, he can destroy us, knowing what he knows. If he continues as he has been, we may all find a better victory than we otherwise might. The counter-Imperial forces are stronger because he’s undermining the Empire from within."

"I've touched what's left of his mind. How do you bear it?"

"Poorly." Leia makes a face. "I complain, I cling to anyone who will distract me, and I fuss about every single instance."

 _That's not true,_ Arala says, loudly enough that Ahsoka hears her through Terik. _Leia serves faithfully, and when she needs the poison out of her system, she does her best to vent it safely, or have her lovers take it away._

Ahsoka's eyes widen and she smiles, but doesn't make a joke. "Good. That's a much better way of dealing with matters than wishing it wasn't happening and being miserable."

Something in Leia's heart wishes that Arala wouldn't talk so blithely of her many lovers in front of Ahsoka, Fulcrum, the woman who came to dinner with her parents and sang her songs that were secretly for meditation. She won't moderate her behavior for anyone, least of all a not-quite-Jedi, but that's not the same as flaunting it.

Luke says, "He's getting better."

"Every waterfall is going backwards," Ahsoka says in the same tone. "They taught me that in the Temple when I was half your age. All things change for better or for worse. But his getting better doesn't mean he'll ever be what someone else would consider tolerable again. Do you have another argument to try on me?"

"He'd be better off away from the Emperor, with people who care about him." Luke has more faith in what he’s saying than Leia does. He has more distance from what it’s really like dealing with Vader, what it’s really like being in Vader’s head all the time.

If they all make it through this, Leia’s going to follow through on at least one of her threats. Not the ones about cutting off contact with Luke, or cutting herself off from the pack, but she’s definitely not going to be in charge of anything that has to do with dealing with Vader. That will be all on him.

Ahsoka doesn’t look anywhere near as optimistic as Luke does. “Has he said anything about wanting a wolf?”

"He's afraid of wolves," Luke says. Krayt sends sympathy and the echo of pain through the room. "If another bonded with him, I don't know if he would accept it, or what he would do to avoid it."

Ahsoka presses her lips together for a long moment. "I wouldn't wish him on any wolf in the universe."

"Neither would I," Leia says, over a protest from Krayt and Arala.

 _He deserves to heal._ Their joined mindvoices are sharper than the nips they give misbehaving cubs, as if they can bowl over the wolfsiblings in the room by strength of will. _If a wolf will have him, he will be better for it,_ Krayt goes on. _Part of him is missing._

"Alderaan is missing," Leia says, and the wolves are quiet. "Jedha is missing. The Jedi are gone."

"The Jedi are right here," Ahsoka says after a moment. "Two of you, at least. And your pack is growing."

"If you want to--" Luke says, and Krayt echoes him eagerly.

_Please join us._

_Wolves belong in packs._ Arala sends the feeling of lying in a pile of warm, well-fed bodies, breathing in unison with each other, with the packsense, with the Force, strong and powerful and connected.

"Who, exactly, is in charge here?" Ahsoka asks, aloud and in mindspeech. "When you disagree, which of you is queen?" 

_We are,_ is the answer.

Ahsoka shakes her head once. "You've been apart, surely. You've disagreed."

"Rarely," Luke says.

"Only on the most important things." Leia doesn't try to soften the edge in her voice. "When they disagree, they talk with us, or they do what they think is best and refuse to admit that anyone else might have a point of view worth listening to."

"And which of them wins?" Ahsoka asks.

There is another moment of quiet, of wolves talking to each other, before Arala says, _Whichever of us feels the closest to the truth when it is time to decide._

"If you disagree, surely you both feel close to the truth."

Arala says, _If Krayt is certain and I am not, she has found the truth I seek._

 _And then she adds to the pack,_ Leia says. _Whether I might agree to it or not._

"Once," Luke says aloud.

"What if Krayt decides she wants the Emperor in her pack?" Leia asks.

Both the wolves growl softly. _Never._ Their voices are together, but not blended into the same word as they were before.

"How do you know?" she presses.

_He is not of the pack. He is nothing like ours._

"He was a Senator," Ahsoka says, her tone mild. "Just like Leia."

 _Nothing like her,_ Arala says. _We have felt him through the packsense and there is nothing there to save._

 _The Senate was no pack._ Krayt's voice is firm for someone who has no way of knowing what she's talking about.

"No, it wasn't," Ahsoka agrees. "And neither is the whole of the Alliance. Yet."

"It won't be," Luke says quickly. "That's not--no."

They're presenting themselves incredibly poorly in front of someone who came in saying she wanted to be their ally. Leia sighs. "What do you need to hear from us?"

"That you know how to stop yourselves from repeating other people's mistakes. That the Alliance is no Great Army of the Republic." Ahsoka looks at Arala, then at Krayt. "That your wolves don't run the entire thing."

Luke laughs. "The generals would drop us in empty space if we tried."

"Arala and I keep track of our covert agent and keep the uprisings on track," Leia says. "Luke's been training the pack as best he can. We don't have time to be admirals even if we wanted to."

"And your wolves don't either?"

Krayt huffs. _The soldiers wouldn't listen if we tried._

"I might--possibly--be able to help with your covert agent," Ahsoka says. "And with the movement away from the Empire, where I have contacts."

"You're welcome to the pack if you want to join it," Luke says.

"And we'd understand why you wouldn't want to." Leia puts her hand on Arala's side and adds, "Some days I would leave if I could."

"I'm not looking to skip the galaxy, take up nerfherding, or wait for someone else to stop the Empire." Ahsoka unclips two lightsaber hilts from her belt and sets them on the table. "I'm in."

Arala noses her hand. _Welcome, sister. Your brother, his packmate, and their cubs are welcome._

 _Thank you._ Ahsoka's mindvoice carries no sharp edges the way Vader does. _Where do we begin?_

 _First, let's get those cubs out of your ship and see if we have anyone they like,_ Luke says.


	10. Chapter 10

Han meets Ahsoka with a lazy salute and, not two minutes later, he's on his knees with a wolf in his arms, blinking back tears he'd never admit are there. "Hey, little guy," he says, as the cub, his fur so dark brown it's almost black, worries the meat of his thumb. "Nice to meet you."

 _Mine,_ the cub says, loudly enough that Luke can hear him through the packsense.

 _You got me, buddy._ "Kid, come meet my brother." Han sends Luke the cub's scentname, the dusty scent of an enclosed space underlaid by blaster cleanser and a faint sting of spice.

 _Welcome to the pack,_ Luke says, and sends his own scentname to the cub with a rush of warmth.

Krayt and Arala spend the rest of the day with the new cubs and the Alliance members who are interested in bonding with them. Two more cubs make their decision as quickly as Han's brother, while the other hang back.

That means a chorus of new voices in the packsense, and a growing sense of strength and awareness. The larger pack doesn't increase the distances they can reach across--wolves aren't suited for space, not really--but it gives Krayt's mental voice a little more weight when she speaks with the newcomers.

Luke waits until after dinner, while Leia is recovering from a long-distance discussion and Krayt is asleep behind his chair, to bring up Han's new responsibilities. He sets aside his plans for the next week on a datapad. "Now that you have a wolfbrother, you need to come to some of my classes."

"What am I missing, professor?" Han asks, one hand on the cub who's sleeping in his lap. They haven't decided on a spoken name yet. "Care and feeding, got 'em. Dealing with furballs in your head, yeah. I don't need lessons in the Force, 'cause I don't have it. You gonna teach me how to fly with a wolf in the hold? Oh, no, I'm good there too."

"You may be more connected to the Force than you think. The Guardians say--"

"Look." Han points at him. "I was in my right mind when I met the Guardians, way more than you were, and they didn't say anything about me having some kind of magic potential."

"You weren't there to get tested, or to meet cubs, or anything, and neither were we. Their teachings say that anyone who's open to the packsense is open to the Force in the same way, to some extent. I don't think you're going to start throwing Star Destroyers around like they're datapads without any training, but who knows?" Luke shrugs. 

"How many times have you told me the packsense isn't the Force?"

"That doesn't mean they're completely separate. Nothing is completely separate from the Force."

Han shakes his head. "I don't have time to meditate and I don't need to learn. The Force doesn't need me and I don't need it."

"Maybe you don't know what you can do, yet, since you didn't know last week that you could find a cub. Anyway, if I'm trying to convince everyone else to do it, General Solo--"

"Nope." Han strokes the cub's ears. "You get lip from somebody who thinks I should be there, I'll tell them the nitty-gritty about being the guy who gets to watch a mating from inside somebody else's head."

They've left that part out of the pre-cub-meeting briefings, as such, because it won't be relevant to most people. Guardians sometimes have partners who don't have wolves and they aren't excluded from the rituals, but they don't all have the same forced front-row seat Han had put up with.

Luke gives up the fight. "Your pup's got to come, anyway, to bond with the pack. You can go do whatever you need to on the base, and we'll look after him."

"Without me."

"If you have better things to do."

"That's fighting dirty."

Luke shrugs. "You could get cub leave if you want it." The Alliance has made rules giving deference to people with new, intensely needy family members. It hasn't been that hard to get their new pack members counted that way.

"If they could spare me that long, maybe. Not for me, for him. But we have too many missions coming up." Han switches to mindspeech on the off-chance anyone might overhear from the corridor. _The missions we've sent out near the Endor system are getting close. Whatever's going on in your guy's favorite nowhere system, we'll know soon, and I'm not sending anyone anywhere I wouldn't go._

 _That doesn't mean you should lead the Endor mission. What's the point of decoy scanning in the area if on the one that counts, they catch a general?_

_Who says we're gonna get caught?_ The cub on Han's lap whimpers and shifts, probably responding to his defensive irritation, and he looks down at the wolf. "It's okay. Go back to sleep."

 _If I wanted to go on what's supposed to look like a routine scanning mission, would you let me?_ Luke asks. _Or Leia?_

_I wouldn't try to stop you. You're faster than me these days. Both of you. Besides, you're not in my chain of command, Jedi._

Luke frowns at him and says, where no one can hear him except Han and Krayt, "That's not what I meant."

"Yeah?" Han shakes his head and looks back at the cub. "You asking me to skip it as my good buddy Luke, not as a Jedi?"

None of the Jedi ranks really apply to them and they haven't had enough training to qualify for the Guardians', either. No one has worried about it yet. The Jedi with wolves don't answer to the Alliance's generals and the Alliance's troops don't answer to the Jedi unless they're on a specific mission.

Leia had been part of the Alderaan cell, officially, when she and Arala found each other. Where that leaves Han is anybody's guess. 

"I'm asking as one of your intelligence consultants."

Han makes a show of squinting at him. "Wait, Leia? When'd you cut your hair?"

"Shut up. Fine. I just don't want you getting in trouble."

"I don't want me getting in trouble either. I can go with a cargo, something small and specialized, and the cub here can stay with your classes."

Luke shudders at the thought hard enough that he wakes Krayt, who's been asleep behind him. _Separation?_ she asks. _I'm right here. Where do you need to go that you can't take me?_

_Not us, Han and his brother._

She huffs. _Bad for the cub. Don't do it._

Han waves a hand at her. _Stop smirking at me. Both of you. C'mon, your Maj, I can't take him and I have work to do. You'll keep him out of trouble, right?_

 _He's your brother._ There is more in the word than any spoken language can convey, layers of need and interconnection that make a wolfbond what it is.

_It's my mission._

_So take him along,_ Luke says, a moment before Krayt does. _Hide him in a locker when you hit the Endor system. You can't go in the_ Falcon _, though. Too recognizable._

 _You want me to go on a reconnaissance mission, silent, sneaky, under their sensors, with a safe place for a cub, and you want me to take_ Home One? _Great advice, Grand Admiral Skywalker. Okay, none of the ships out there are as fast as the_ Falcon _, but they'll only notice that when we're headed away from them._

 _Don't leave your brother behind,_ Krayt says. _Leaving the pack is bad enough._

 _Is he old enough to be quiet if you ask him to? If the ship is boarded?_ Luke asks.

Han shrugs. _Soundproof paneling. It'll block out everything shy of a Wookiee orgasm._

"Just be careful, all right?" Luke puts his hand on Han's on top of the cub's fur. "Silent and sneaky."

"I promise. This little guy can curl up with Motivator and they'll probably sleep through the whole thing."

"Do you have a name for him yet?"

"I was thinking Arsenal, but when we win this damn war--" Han's fingers tighten a little "--he needs a name he can wear in peace."

"Soon."

_If your guy's telling the truth, maybe._

Luke hasn't let himself think hard about Vader's information, and he's sure Leia hasn't told Vader when they're planning to investigate Endor. There can't be enough Imperial troops to keep a guard on such a remote system that can take out the _Falcon_ every day of the cycle just in case.

_If he wanted to waste our time, he'd have come up with a better lie._

Three days later, about the time when the Endor mission should be getting back, a communications officer comes by the storage room designated as the wolves' classroom at the midday break in classes. She hands Luke a comm small enough that he can listen to it without being overheard. "Recording of the Endor transmission, with some personal content for you, sir," she says.

"Thank you," Luke says, without protesting the title, and listens to it. It starts with a series of curses in Shyriiwook underscored with a young cub whimpering that makes the hair on the back of Luke's neck stand up. He's reaching out for Han and Chewie, too far for the packsense but not the Force, when Han's voice comes on the transmission. "Ignore Chewie," he says, curtly. "We need to look at the scans before we can figure out what we're up against."

Han doesn't sound afraid, only annoyed, bickering with Chewbacca about what to do next like they're not making an official report. It would all be above Luke's rank, hidden by opsec, if they weren't his packmates.

Sometimes Luke can understand the appeal of turning an entire army into a single pack. No one could get cut off from someone important to them, then, and any officials who stood in the way would be irrelevant. If it led to the ability to share thoughts over any distance, he might consider trying it, even knowing the possible consequences.

"We'll be on base in an hour," Han says after more argument. "Tell the pack everyone's fine. Out."

Luke can't get anything from his Force sense of Han more in-depth than that he's alive and unhappy, and that was obvious from the transmission. He lets it go and gives the comm back to the officer. There wasn't enough there to warrant someone coming by in person. "Thank you. Is there anything else?"

"No, sir. Nonessential personnel are still on yellow standby."

"Understood."

Yellow standby means they need to be ready to scramble if something follows Han back from his mission. None of the Alliance's bases have been secure enough to trust long-term, so everyone is light on possessions. Luke scans the classroom, but there's nothing to clean up, not even a stray stylus. If he had to run to a ship this instant, he'd only lose a few changes of clothing, as long as everyone made it away safely.

He's done that before, and lost a lot more than clothes.

Krayt pushes her nose against his hand.

 _I'm okay,_ he tells her, pushing away the ache of grief and the images of the farm on fire.

_Your pack is here. All around you._

_Yes, you are._ Wolves' sense of the past is misty at best. They don't hold onto memories as clearly as their siblings, which means they don't bear grudges and they don't carry loss. _I miss my first pack, but I'm glad you're here._

_We're going to miss lunch if you stand around any longer._

And wolves think with their stomachs. Luke smiles, even if it feels a little dim, and ruffles her ears. _We'd better get there before Motivator and Hidden get back._

_Yes. Those cubs will eat everything they see._

The base is still in yellow standby when the _Falcon_ lands, while the techs deal with the scanner data, and two days after that, when the two teams meet to discuss what they've found and how to deal with it. 

"Thank you for coming," Mon Mothma says to the members of the pack on the strike team and two squadrons of pilots. "General Solo, what did you find?"

Han keys the display, which projects the image of a series of gantries with TIE fighters clustered around them. "The Imps are building something big in the Endor system. Not sure what it is, yet--there don't look to be many sealed areas, no armament, no intrinsic shielding showing up on scanners. Here's the _Falcon_ for scale, and a Star Destroyer." The new construction is maybe twenty times the size of the freighter, not as long as a Star Destroyer--yet. 

"They're protecting it with shielding projected up from one of the moons. Those TIEs aren't patrolling worth anything, though--none of them moved a klick toward us while we were in-system. We didn't exactly go up and knock on the door, though."

Chewbacca adds something, sounding impatient.

Han nods. "Thanks, yeah. Like he said, the only visible civilization on that moon's the Imps, but the area around the shield generator is habitable forest, maybe inhabited. Anybody who goes down there needs to be quick on their feet." He glances at Luke. "Whatever they're building, they're hauling their materials to the back end of nowhere to do it."

"Thank you, Generals." Mon Mothma nods to them. "We have reason to believe that this is a high-priority target. To attack it, we will need to neutralize the shield generator, then send bombers in to take out the construction proper."

"Is the shield generator generating its own shield?" Leia asks.

"To the best of our knowledge, no."

"Why wouldn't it?" Luke asks.

Han points to the moon the construction is orbiting. "There's no one down here except Imperials. They can monitor anyone who gets close to this moon and shoot them out of the sky if they don't have the right codes. Shielding the shield generator would waste energy they want for the stuff they're building."

He clears his throat and goes on. "So we'd be out of luck in an Alliance ship. We'd be space dust if we didn't have defectors, captured Imp ships, and enough spies to get us the codes so we can fly up and say we're inspecting the shield generator, with the intel to back it up."

Leia shivers and puts her hand on Arala's back, which is the only clue Luke has about where some of the intel came from.

Han says, "We'll send the ground-based team in first, then, once the construction is unshielded, the bombers come in and clean up."

Mon Mothma nods. "Thank you, General Solo. Any questions?"

One of the pilots asks, "Are we expecting snub fighters?"

"There's nowhere to hide them," Han says. "Whatever this thing's going to be, it's not there yet."

Like most plans, this one does not survive contact with the enemy without changing considerably. The ground team and their wolves take out the shield without a hitch and send the message to the orbital team to close in, but as soon as they've got all the surviving Imps in hand and ankle cuffs, they're hit with a barrage of rocks.

"Into the bunker!" Leia shouts, and everyone with enough control of the Force or a wolf big enough grabs one of their prisoners and gets to safety.

"Who comes after a wolfpack with rocks?" Ahsoka asks no one in particular when they're under cover. Outside, one of the prisoners they hadn't been able to grab cries out in pain.

"Who attacks defenseless prisoners?" Luke asks.

The answer is waist-high furry creatures with large eyes. A group of them have the Imp prisoners lashed to logs moments after their first attack, and they're carrying off one of the troopers.

One of the creatures whistles and several turn on the bunker team, wielding crude weaponry. They don't seem to have energy weapons or anything that could do serious damage to armored opponents like the troopers they're carrying or the wolves, who are kitted out for battle.

That doesn't make their stone spears a joke. Luke asks, _Ready?_

Leia answers, _Go._

The rearguard creatures look fascinated by their lightsaber blades, not really intimidated, and they don't back off immediately. "Let us pass," Luke says, sending the image of a clear path to their transport as widely as he can. "We have no quarrel with you."

The creatures stare at them without moving. Their prisoners yell for help.

 _If we got the troopers back, they might join us,_ Leia says.

_We can't do a prisoner swap without capturing some of them._

_We could--_

_No._ Luke knows these aren't the same individual troopers who killed his family, but in their masked armor they all look the same, and they're part of the same machine. _The Empire invaded their land. Whatever they're going to do, the Imperials have earned it._

 _We can always use trained troops,_ Leia says, but she lets it go and focuses on the image of a clear path Luke is sending. Aloud, she says, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," in a relatively pleasant voice.

"I don't think they know any of our language."

"Amilyn, bring out one of our prisoners," she orders.

Amilyn leads out a hobbled trooper. The creatures growl, a surprisingly menacing sound from such small beasts. Luke adds the trooper to his mental image: the three Rebels and their wolves leaving, taking the trooper with them, still bound. He brings the blade of his lightsaber close to the trooper's neck. "Walk toward the ship," he says. "Don't stop, don't wriggle, or we'll leave you for the locals."

"Yes, fine, yes," the trooper says with the impersonal voice the helmets give all of them.

The creatures give them a wide berth so the strike team can withdraw, one captured trooper at a time. Partway through the slow process, bright explosions in the sky followed by transmissions let them know the bombing squadron has done its job.

The strike team leaves the shield generator's bunker open so that the natives can use whatever parts of the Imperials' supplies they can figure out. The last few team members strip the armory and come out with enough blaster power packs to blow the whole thing up. Leia thanks them, her eyes on the native creatures. "Whatever those things are, I don't want them biting into batteries and getting hurt."

"They're more likely to hurt themselves with stone arrowheads," Luke says. 

"At least then it's not the Imperials doing it, or us letting it happen."

"True."

They lift off with their prisoners without getting into a confrontation with the creatures. The Imperial checkpoints are gone now that the bunker is defeated and the orbital construction is smithereens. The stormtroopers in shackles go in the crew compartment, guarded by wolves and their fastest siblings.

Before they make it to hyperspace, Leia goes pale and excuses herself from the rest of the team.

 _Do you want company?_ Luke asks.

_I have more than I want. Come with me so I can break your hand._

Someday she's going to follow through on that threat. He says, "Give us a few minutes," and takes her hand.

The first squeeze is sharp enough that for a moment he wonders how much damage she's doing. She scowls, then her eyes widen just before she shuts them with a curse.

Luke knows better than to ask her to relay the conversation, but it's tempting.

After a few moments--not a long conversation, but then it's probably not one of the political strategizing sessions--she lets his hand go and gives him a smile that would look equally at home on Arala's face. "I wish I'd been in a bomber today. Or sent you up."

They'd talked about sending a pack member on the bombing run for coordination purposes, but in the end it would've been difficult to deal with a wolf in a one-person ship, or difficult to deal with the distance from a wolf otherwise. "Yeah? Why?"

"It would've been poetic. Heroic. The kind of thing people write legends about and sing songs about. The pilots who killed two Death Stars."

Luke stares at her, and from the lack of sound around him, he figures everybody else is listening, too. "That's what they were building?"

"Did you know?" Han asks.

"No. Did you?" Leia counters.

"No."

"Close-held information till it was too late for the Empire to do anything about us, I think," Leia says. "So close we never got a chance to let our wolves pee on the ashes."

Luke asks her privately, _You don't think they're building another somewhere, do you?_

_He's sure they aren't. If he doesn't know about it, I doubt anyone else does._


	11. Chapter 11

Four members of the wolfsibling strike force meet Darth Vader on Yavin IV, near the abandoned base. He comes alone in a TIE Interceptor; the wolves and their siblings require larger transport, and the _Falcon_ serves as well as ever, though Han and Chewbacca stay aboard with their wolves.

They have less influence than the other four, in any case, and Leia would just as soon keep them out of blaster range of Vader. She's shielding as strongly as she can against him and his violent emotions.

The area that was once a base is humid and hot, just like it was when the Alliance was there before. The rendezvous is mid-afternoon local time, and the wolves' tongues loll out as they try to cool themselves off.

If it affects Vader at all, there's no external sign. Perhaps his breathing is incrementally faster or more filtered, but Leia can't tell. He approaches across an empty space, once a temple, once a hangar, with his hands empty and no weapons visible on his belt.

There is a thrumming tension in every person there, and a slightly different one in the wolves. Krayt and Arala have been telling their pack time and again that this man is also pack, that he's capable of being intensely dangerous, and that he will not, will not harm them. The wolves might believe it; Leia doesn't.

A well-trained Jedi would meet an unarmed opponent without threatening them. Leia has her pack, her lightsaber, and her control of the Force. If she could threaten him, if he would believe for an instant that the wolves--that her brother--would let her follow through, she would brandish everything at once.

She says, "Thank you for meeting us."

He nods. "You honor me with your presence."

"We don't, actually," Ahsoka calls from Leia's right. "We honor the queens of our pack, who ask us to stay our hands for now."

That earns her a nod in turn, outwardly impassive as the mask can make him. If he feels something more, he feels it at a shield's distance from Leia. "I have sworn not to harm any of this pack, and I will not be forsworn again."

"Or else what?" Rex asks.

 _I lost my pack and my family once,_ Vader answers him, his voice softer and gentler than it can ever be through the mask. _I didn't want to survive it the first time and I wouldn't allow myself to survive it the second._

Rex's brother Vod huffs. Leia doesn't know them well enough to know whether that constitutes acceptance, but it seems like the best they'll get.

 _This pack can survive without you,_ she says, her eyes on Vader. _We will survive you._

 _And we can support every one of the members without breaking, if we do it together,_ Luke says.

Leia has had enough distant conversations with Vader, supported by the pack and the Force, that she knows it's true. _The Guardians have offered a pup,_ she adds.

"No," Vader says in every manner available to him. Leia doesn't let herself wince visibly. "I could not keep a wolf safe from the Emperor."

"But then," Luke says. Leia makes a quick gesture and he stops, then begins again. _Please consider it, afterward._

_If there is an afterward, I will consider such things then._

Leia shivers despite the heavy warmth of Yavin and all her safety measures. "If you betray us, if you betray the galaxy again, you will have less to lose if you have no wolfbond."

Vader makes a hoarse noise, nothing like a laugh. "That's immaterial. If I were to lose you again--" he spreads his hand wide, encompassing all of them and their wolves "--I would have nothing left."

Ahsoka laughs once, bitterly. "Only an empire at your command."

"I have never wanted an empire."

There is a moment's silence. Perhaps they say something to each other that Leia cannot hear, in some part of the packsense distant from her or through the Force.

Ahsoka sighs, her posture easing slightly. "Just don't change your mind, or lose it, when the moment comes."

"There will be many moments between the end of the emperor and the true end of the empire. If I survive the former, the latter will come as quickly as I can make it." 

"You'd better," she says, but there is a fondness in her voice.

Luke falls to one knee, his hands on Krayt's ruff. "Are we agreed?" he asks.

 _Yes,_ says Krayt, with Arala's agreement just after.

"Yes. The plan is as sound as I can make it," Vader says.

"If you had a ship with three seats I'd come with you to see it all happen," Ahsoka says. "Yes."

"I'm in," Luke says.

Leia glances at Rex, who raises his eyebrows at her and says, "As long as there's no cub on the line, I'm not going to try to get in your way, ma'am."

She half-wishes he would, or that Han had been willing to come to this meeting. He'd said he'd rather keep the engines warm and guard her retreat, and that he didn't have any Force sense. He has more common sense than Luke does, at least in this particular matter, and he's been against all of it from the start.

The first steps of the plan have worked, and across the galaxy people are living slightly different lives because of it. If the next step works, so much the better.

It's the final step Leia can't bring herself to believe in, not from a man who clearly feels the Force and yet is capable of so much evil.

Arala pushes Leia's scentname at her, the sharp herbal thrynin, sweet pluckberries, and smoke catching in her throat. _Let him show that his milkteeth are gone and he can truly bite._

_He has bitten far too much already._

Arala puts her snout in Leia's hand, cold nose and warm fur and reassurance. _He is pack. He will bite for us._

"Do it," Leia says.

"As you command." Vader bows to them, his cape swishing.

Arala growls; Krayt whimpers. Leia tries to put words on their unease. "Not at my command, or our command. Not for me, or Luke, or the pack. Do it because the galaxy needs you to."

She can feel Vader's gaze despite the mask. "If I could act for the sake of the galaxy, I would have dispatched him decades ago."

Ahsoka says, "Clouds the judgment, attachment does. The mind must rule, not the heart, mm."

Luke chokes on a laugh. He has less practice at hiding his reactions to things than Leia does. She smiles faintly.

Vader's vocoder crackles. "Attachment is the only thing that can cloud my mind enough to hide my intentions from the Emperor. He believes I am hunting you even now."

"Good job, sir," Rex says.

"I will hunt you again as soon as it is done." Vader tosses an oddly informal salute to Rex, and walks to his ship.

The trip back to the Alliance's base and the next day feel as surreal as a fever to Leia. The _Falcon_ spends it at the fringe of the Coruscant system, as far out from Imperial beacons and patrols as they can be and still be within the same star's gravity well.

"When he does it," Luke says, too many times.

"If," Han says, every time.

"When," Ahsoka says, every time.

"I can't deal with any of you," Leia says. Arala touches noses with Rex's brother Vod.

"I've never been good at waiting either," Rex says. "Want to spar?"

"Yes," Leia says.

The wolves are pacing, every one of them, not listening to their siblings. _You can't hear him at this distance,_ Leia reminds Arala.

_You can, and I can hear you._

_There's nothing to hear yet._ Leia pushes herself into physical training with Rex so she can accomplish something useful with her mind full of other things.

She raises her arm to block and throws a kick just as Vader's mind reaches hers, calling into Arala's mind and Krayt's and the whole packsense at once. He shouts, _No more._

Whatever the answer is, the pack doesn't hear it. They know only that he is in pain, worse than ever, and alone, drifting in the vastness of the universe like a lost ship drained of its last spark of power.

 _You are not alone._ Arala, Krayt, the whole pack sends him the feeling of running together, of strength, of breathing in unison and existing in the harmony of wolves who know each other's minds. The packsense usually does not stretch across a planet's diameter, let alone a system's, but the words carry through the Force, shared with everyone on the _Falcon_ , with all the pack members who are part of the queens' strength. Many of them--half-grown cubs and their siblings, the newest ones whose partners are as young as Han's--are a hyperspace jump away, waiting to find out whether they should fight or flee. Arala reaches them, Krayt reaches them, or Leia does, or Luke does, and they lend their voices to the reassurance. _You are not lost. You are ours._

The sense of Vader flickers and the pack sends the feeling of wolves running together, lending a shoulder when one member falters, seeking and hunting. 

There is a sense of pain from Vader, mental and physical, of exhaustion. _I can't--_

Leia has wanted to block him out of her mind so many times, but in his moment of weakness, she reaches toward him instead, and her voice is Arala's, Krayt's, the pack's. _Do it!_

There is a thunderclap of energy, a sudden void where strength was and is not. The Emperor is dead, and the Force feels a little brighter already.

In the echoing silence afterward, Vader sends, _He is dead. I am well enough for the next step. Rendezvous in the Senate chamber._

Everyone on the _Falcon_ cheers, embraces, kisses, yelps, the wolves leaping at their siblings. There is a long breathless period before Han can remember to key the auto-transmit to the Alliance, the one that says that signs are cautiously optimistic. Then they set course for the planet will never be called Imperial Center again.

As the adrenalin starts to ebb, Leia claims one of the seats in the cockpit and leans against Arala. She feels like they've been system-hopping, stretching a day that started too many hours ago without letting themselves rest, and pushing her connection with her wolf, her pack, and the Force past what she can handle.

They get the news transmission before they reach the first inhabited outpost in the system: Vader has overthrown the emperor and declared a change of standing orders: all Imperial troops are to stand down from battle readiness and report to their commanding forces before engaging in any further violence. Elections for senatorial seats must be held in every system as soon as possible, and the senate will convene in eight weeks on Chandrila, where negotiations will begin for the handover of Imperial power to a representative body.

The wolves on the _Falcon_ press together in a heap in the main living quarters, asleep before the broadcast ends. They, like their packmates on the ship jumping into the Coruscant system, care nothing for the political wrangling; they are triumphant that the worst enemy has fallen and exhausted.

The news nets are full of chatter about what it will mean and how it will all work. Leia turns them off, ignoring them as decisively as Arala has.

Luke grins as if he did the whole thing himself. "You see," he says.

"Beginning negotiations for a handover of power is not handing over power," Leia says. She refuses to smile, no matter how close his joy is. "I'll see victory when we have it."

The deconstruction of the Empire begins when they land on Coruscant and are escorted to what was once the Imperial Senate chamber by a crowd of news net correspondents, all clamoring to be the first to speak to Leia. If she didn't have wolves with the body mass of a large human pushing forward to make space for her, the press would keep her from leaving the ship entirely. As it is, she says, "I will give a statement after my first meeting with Vader," and then leaves it to the wolves and occasional subtle pushes of the Force to make a path.

The only presence more effective against the press than the wolves is Vader with a phalanx of guards. Even so, a journalist asks, "How do you plan to transfer power?"

Vader ignores the question and extends his hand to the wolves--Krayt, then Arala. He says, "Leave us," and there must be a heavy suggestion in it, for the press go as easily as his guards.

The Senate chamber is huge and as empty as it has been in Leia's nightmares for cycles. "I want the answer," she says, and if she whispers in her mind to Luke that he had better hang back or she'll tackle him to the ground, it's not the first time that day.

"To what?" Vader asks.

"Your plan for transferring power."

"It is your plan. Or, perhaps, ours."

The thought makes her shiver. They have only the vaguest outline of a plan, but if he is telling the truth, if he truly does not want the power he could seize, the galaxy could soon breathe more freely. But it all might prove false. "The elections you've called for will hold authority, then. You will not ascend the throne."

Vader falls to one knee. It gets him wolves at face level--Krayt and Arala, still, and Ahsoka's Terik. The others hang back from him. "I have never wanted any throne for myself."

"We don't want it," Luke says.

Han snorts. "Speak for yourself, kid."

Leia glares at him. "Han."

"It was a joke." He holds up his hands. "You think I want to get promoted past general? No thanks."

"Let's talk through the plans," Ahsoka says. "All of them. Before we try to explain them to anyone else."

"They're in place," Vader says.

"What is?" Leia asks, afraid that they've walked into an elaborate trap.

Vader has his hand on Arala's ruff, improbably gentle. His presence is calmer than it has ever been, less painful, easier to bear. "Everything we have worked on together, you and I." They may survive this alliance yet.

"That wasn't a plan on how to restore the Republic. That was--" Leia waves her hand, lost for words, and Arala grins at her. "It was barely a beginning."

Someone laughs. Leia has to turn to see that it's Rex. "Somehow I'm not surprised."

"But we can put together plans," Luke says. "All of us, and people from the Alliance who know how the Republic worked, when it worked. People who have studied history, there must be some of those."

"If the new senate is convening in eight weeks, we'd better get started," Leia says, and offers her hand to Vader to help him to his feet.


End file.
